The Great Debasement and English overseas trade: Gresham and Johnson in context

On the basis of price data collected from Gresham’s Daybook and Johnson’s letters, this article re-examines a conventional argument in the literature: that currency depreciation during the Great Debasement made English cloth cheaper and thus stimulated an export boom. The price data reveal that the purchase prices of English wool and cloth rose at roughly same rate as the depreciation of pound sterling. The two effects of coinage debasement – inflation and currency depreciation – largely offset each other. Depreciation alone is insufficient to explain the sustained expansion of English exports, rather, strong foreign demand was likely to provide the underlying momentum for the English cloth boom.