Coinage

One such family were the Quints of Lostwithiel, who in the reign of Edward I had owned even the land on which the great hall of the earldom of Cornwall and the adjacent river quay were situated.

Successive generations of the family had sat in Parliament, and Thomas Quint (MP for Lostwithiel in July 1338) leased from King Edward II the offices of weigher of tin and keeper of the tinner’s gaol, along with the ‘Blowinghous’ and ‘Weyhynghous’ in Lostwithiel, where tin brought for coinage was smelted and weighed.   

The volume of the family’s business at the end of the 14th century is exemplified by John Quint, one of Lostwithiel’s representatives in the Parliament of 1395, who on a single occasion in the autumn of 1385 presented as much as 3,000 lbs. of tin for coinage, but even he was eclipsed by his kinsman Roger Quint, five times mayor of the town between 1394 and 1420, who handled even greater quantities of the metal.[HoP MaM]

It is true, I confess, that Carmarden avows in part, that is, there be some slabs of tin (for
in that he calls them blocks, therein he speaketh ignorantly) which are but 50 lb., 100 lb.,
150 lb., 200 lb. weight.
But whereas he saith her Majesty is not paid in respect of their small quantity, he should
have said, for that she hath nothing at all for such slabs.
And herein is the deceit, that under the colour of some to have a slab of tin for their
household provision or to send into France for wine for their houses and suchlike colours,
that they may not forfeit them, they have the lion stamped on them, and such slabs,
although they mount to the number of a 100 or 200 thousand weight, are not put into the
Customer’s books, whereby the quantity of tin cannot truly appear.

....

But for the blocks, which I affirm in Cornwall to be 13 hundred thousand, that they be commonly 300, 400 and sometime 500 lb. weight and odd