The present bronze coinage was made in 1860 after the example of the bronze coinage of Napoleon III, the reformer of the French currency; it was he who established a gold standard in France, hitherto a ‘silver country.’
A bronze penny not much worn weighs 1/3 oz., the halfpenny 1/5 oz. The latter is one inch in diameter. The silver penny of early Plantagenet times was the size of the present sixpence but thinner, so that, at the full weight of 22-1/2 grains, it was slightly heavier than our threepenny piece = 21·8 grains. It bore the effigy of the king with ‘Henricus Rex’ or suchlike inscription; on the reverse was a cross, with pellets or other ornaments in the intervals, and the name of the moneyer and city, as ‘Edmund on Lin(coln).’ The cross gave rise to the idea that it indicated where the penny could be broken or cut into halfpence or farthings. Doubtless it was so cut where change was scarce; and the first silver farthing was coined by Edward I, 1279, to prevent this cutting up of the pence, but equally with a cross.
At present silver pence and twopences are only coined for Maundy money.
The groat of four pence, grossus sterlingus, first coined about 1279, discontinued from the time of Elizabeth, who first coined sixpences and threepences, was revived in 1836 at the instance, or insistence, of Joseph Hume, an M.P. who, it is said, found it convenient for the exact payment of an 8d. London cab fare not exceeding a mile in the days when copper pennies weighing an ounce were inconvenient to carry in the pocket. He died in 1855, and in 1856 the Joey was discontinued.
The threepenny piece was revived in 1845.
The florin was first issued in 1849, an ill-advised attempt at decimalising the pound; it bore the inscription ‘one tenth of a pound,’ but it has utterly failed to take the place of the convenient half-crown, an important unit in the binary division of the pound. Public convenience appreciates the gold sovereign and half-sovereign, the silver half-crown, shilling, sixpence and threepence. The florin is a disturbing coin offering no advantage over two separate shillings; and the double florin is worse.
No one wants the pound decimalised except a few decimal unpractical persons. A properly taught schoolboy adds up sums of money duodecimally for the pence, decimally for the shillings, converting these by twenties into pounds. It is quite easy to add up a column of pence thus: 8 and 5, 1s. 3d.; and 10, 2s. 1d.; and 8, 2s. 9d.; and 5, 3s. 2d. With the shillings column the units are put down and the tens carried to the column of tens; an odd 1 is put down and half the remainder carried to the column of pounds.
English silver coins are 37/40 = 0·925 fine, i.e. 11 oz. 2 dwt. of the now obsolete 12 oz. mint-pound.
French five-franc pieces are at 0·900, other silver coins are 0·835 fine.