This article examines the nature of ambassadorial gifting by placing the subject within the framework of the important works on gifts and giving. It explains the place of gifts within the ceremonials preceding negotiation, and the reason for that. Ultimately it shows how the value of ambassadorial gifts was calculated in order to create a certain reciprocity in giving. measured reciprocity 349 3 The foreign workmen connected with the Goldsmiths of London were so numerous in the 16th century that certain rules were devised for their life in the City. See William Herbert, The History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of London, 2 vols. (London, 1836), 2:178-184.4 "In view of the popular misconception concerning the amounts of treasure taken by the English, French, and Dutch, one who works with the records is impressed by the paucity rather than the plethora of the specie that fell prey to foreign powers. . . . In only two years were significant portions of a treasure fleet seized by enemies: in 1628 the Dutch took the fleet returning from New Spain, and in 1656 the English prevented most of the specie on the Tierra Firme fleet from reaching the motherland." Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650 (New York, 1970 Few statistics are available on the English mines in the north of the country in the 16th and 17th centuries. As early as the 1560s Germans were brought in for the better working of English silver mines (CSPD 1566-1579, Addenda, 7). Two German brothers, Emmanuel and Daniel Hochstetter, who worked the copper mines in the 1580s and 1590s, were responsible for raising the output of the Caldbeck silver mine in Carlisle, Cumberland. Even at that, the output came only to 435£ per year between 1614 and 1624. For the same ten year period the annual output of copper was worth about 2,300£. Andrew B. Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Stanford, 1978), 92. 6 Appleby, Famine, 175-76. 7 After the opening of the new world, already by 1510, the stock of precious metals