NOTICES TO MEMBERS.

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BY ORDER OF THE COUNCIL.

JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF BANKERS.

FEBRUARY, 1882.

RICHARD B. MARTIN, Esq., M.P., in the Chair.

£. s. d., OR THE ORIGIN OF POUNDS, SHILLINGS AND PENCE.

BY JOHN EVANS, Esq., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., &c.

[Read before the Bankers' Institute, Wednesday, 21st December, 1881.]

I HAVE been requested by your President to read a paper before this Institute, and it has been suggested to me that some account of the origin and history of our English pounds, shillings and pence might not unfittingly occupy your attention for a short period this evening. I do not of course propose to enter into the subject of the origin of money, which has already to some extent been discussed by your President and by Mr. Barclay V. Head, but I shall try to make you acquainted with somewhat more of the pedigree and family history of those three units of our commerce, the£. 8. d.," than is usually comprised in the programme of a commercial or, indeed, of any other education.

As to the letters themselves which form the capitals of so many columns in this city, it is of course well-known that they are merely the initials of the Latin words Libræ, Solidi and Denarii, which were regarded as the equivalents of the English pounds, shillings and pence. There was a time indeed when the same terms and even the same coins were in use over a large part of western Europe; but the process of degrading the coinage at the expense of the people for the benefit of the prince, from which this country has been comparatively exempt, took place with greater rapidity in most other countries. As an example we may look at the £. s. d. of France at the end of the last century, or even at a still earlier

period, and we shall find that though the £. was equivalent to 208., and the s. to 12d., yet the £. represented the livre or franc, about 10d. of our money, the s. was the sou, about one halfpenny, and the d. the denier or one-twelfth of that amount.

There is, indeed, no need to cross the Channel to find an instance of depreciation to an almost equal extent, for at the time of the union of Scotland with England, at the beginning of the 17th century, the pound Scottish was the equivalent of twenty English pence, and the Scottish shilling and the English penny were practically one and the same amount. We shall, however, have an opportunity later on of tracing some of the stages of gradual depreciation in the value of coins which all along retained the same name. I must now attempt to make you acquainted with the origin and development of our three principal English units of the coinage, and will begin with the eldest of the three-the penny.

Although this coin has always in Latin received the name of denarius, yet any immediate connection between the denarius of Roman times and the penny of Saxon date can hardly be traced. The denarius which, under the Roman Commonwealth and the earlier Emperors, had been a silver coin weighing about 60 grains, and of about eightpence intrinsic value, had, under the Lower Empire, dwindled to a copper coin, though silver coins reappeared under different denominations. As its name implies, the denarius represented originally ten smaller pieces which were known as asses, but about 217 B.C. it was decreed that the denarius should pass for sixteen asses and not for ten. This was, no doubt, partly because the basis of all accounts was the as, which even at that early date had been reduced to about one-twelfth of its original weight, but it was also probably in part due to the greater convenience of having as the unit of the coinage a piece susceptible of being constantly halved, to one which was only divisible by five and by two. For the as itself, the duodecimal system, which permitted of division by two, three, four and six, was adopted, the defective nature of a purely decimal system when applied to the ordinary purposes of life, as distinct from arithmetical calculations, having been recognised by all the civilised nations of antiquity. But to return to our penny, the first mention of which as a coin is said to occur in the laws of Ina, king of the West Saxons, who began to reign in A.D. 688. In Saxon the word is spelt * penig or pening; but it also is found as pending, which is regarded as a diminutive of pand, a pledge; so that penny would appear to mean a little pledge or "token." Another view connects the word with the Latin pendere, to weigh.

Whatever the derivation of the name, the penny in Saxon times meant a silver coin equal to the of a pound which weighed about *Skeat's Etym. Dict. s.v.