[2] 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.
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.
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).
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.
Shortly afterwards he engaged in a scheme for supplying a deficiency in the currency, of coins of small value, by the issue of farthing tokens.
They were refused in Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Flint, and Denbigh; and even in counties where they were accepted the demand for them was low, and in six months the issue was less than £600.
The death of Lord Harington in 1614 gave rise to new difficulties, the patent was infringed, and private traders continued to issue illegal coins.
[3] Malynes, in a petition which he addressed to the king from the Fleet Prison (16 February 1619) complained that he had been ruined by his employers, who insisted on paying him in his own farthings.
[3] In 1622 Malynes and fellow merchant Edward Misselden began a famous dispute on free trade.