Gerard de Malynes

Gerard de Malynes (fl. 1585–1641) was an independent merchant in foreign trade, an English commissioner in the Spanish Netherlands, a government advisor on trade matters, assay master of the mint, and commissioner of mint affairs. His dates of birth and death are unknown.

Malynes stated that his ancestors were from Lancashire. His father, a mint-master, may have emigrated about 1552 to Antwerp, where Gerard was born, and returned to England at the time of the restoration of the currency (1561), when Elizabeth obtained the assistance of skilled workmen from Flanders. Malynes showed how an outflow of precious metals could lead to a fall in prices at home and a rise in prices abroad. This was an important clarification of the economic thought of the time. He suggested that higher import tariffs should be levied and exports of bullion prohibited, because he believed that a country's growth was related to the accumulation of precious metals.

Malynes was appointed (about 1586) one of the commissioners of trade in the Low Countries. He was in England in 1587, when he purchased from Sir Francis Drake some of the pearls which Drake brought from Cartagena. He was frequently consulted on mercantile affairs by the privy council. In 1600 he was appointed one of the commissioners for establishing the true par of exchange, and he gave evidence before the committee of the House of Commons on the Merchants' Assurance Bill (November and December 1601). While the Act for the True Making of Woollen Cloth (4 Jac. I, c. 2) was passing through parliament he prepared for the privy council a report showing the weight, length, and breadth of all kinds of cloth.

During the reign of James I, Malynes took part in schemes for developing natural resources. Among them was an attempt to work lead mines in Yorkshire and silver mines in County Durham in 1606, when at his own charge he brought workmen from Germany. He was joined by Lord Eure and some London merchants, but the undertaking failed. Monetary questions were his major concern, and he was an assay master of the mint.

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