coins and currency

coins and currency may be viewed from different angles—as symbols of monarchical or national authority; as art-forms reflecting the culture of a period and the influences at work; or as an economic weapon, control of which was essential for financial stability. For centuries coins were hammered out by hand and the quality of individual coins and the output of different mints varied considerably. Debased or worn coinage was bad for trade: in 1695 William Stout, a Lancaster shopkeeper, complained that ‘the old silver coin of this nation continued to be more and more diminished, which made great distraction in trade’. If the intrinsic value of coins was more than their formal exchange value, they were hoarded or melted down; if markedly less, there was reluctance to accept them.

The king's coinage was one of the most visible manifestations of royal authority. The number of mints was carefully controlled and permission to subjects to strike coins granted sparingly: it was an indication of the weakness of government during Stephen's reign that so many magnates began to mint coins. Counterfeiting or clipping the coinage was regarded as a heinous crime. In 1350 Edward III declared counterfeiting to be high treason and Henry V extended treason to clipping or defacing. As late as 1742 gilding shillings to pass as guineas was made treason. Nor were these idle threats. Phoebe Harris was burned before 20,000 people in 1786 and Christian Murphy in 1789. It was an act of clemency in 1790 when Parliament substituted hanging and not until 1832 was the death sentence abolished.

At the time of Caesar's invasion in 55 bc coins were circulating in southern England. They were largely imitations of Gaulish coins, themselves imitations of Greek staters. Tasciovanus, king of the Catuvellauni, minted gold, silver, and copper coins (c.20 bc), and his son Cunobelinus had coins circulating in the Colchester area: the Iceni and the Coritani also had their own currency. After ad 43 the Romans substituted their own imperial coinage but by c. ad 430 the import and use of coins seems to have ended.

The peoples who penetrated the Roman empire—Vandals, Visigoths, Lombards, Franks, Angles, and Saxons—soon began to issue their own currency. At first the coins imitated Roman specimens, often without understanding the originals, but later kings substituted their own names and images. In England, gold thrymsas and silver sceats appeared around ad 600, minted mainly at Canterbury and London. The earliest coins to be struck by an identifiable king came from the short-lived Peada of Mercia (656). King Ecgfrith of Northumbria had his name on coins soon after (670–85), and Northumbrian coins showed some artistic originality, with a recurrent griffin or dragon. In the 750s, Pepin assumed the kingship of the Franks and introduced a completely new silver coinage, using the Latin term ‘denarius’. When this was borrowed by the English, they used the name penny but retained the symbol d.: twelve denarii made one solidus, and 20 solidi one pound or libra, giving the term £.s.d., which survived until decimalization in 1971. Within a few years Offa of Mercia was issuing his own silver pennies, which were the main form of currency for the next 600 years. Offa's coinage was produced largely at Canterbury, by named moneyers, was more plentiful than before, and of higher artistic merit. Two subsequent advances were Athelstan's claim on his coins to be ‘Rex Totius Britanniae’ from 927, his insistence on one coinage, and the extension of his mints to Exeter, Shrewsbury, Chester, and York. Edgar carried out a great reform of the coinage (c.973), with a system for calling in worn coins for reissue and a large increase in the number of mints.

There was little alteration in the design of the silver penny in the two centuries following the Norman Conquest. Richard and John not only kept the basic design but retained the name of their predecessor Henry II on their coins. A continuing problem was that of change. With only one denomination, pennies were cut to provide halves and quarters. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reported in 1124 that a man who took a pound of pennies (240) to market might find only twelve accepted. Henry I resolved on drastic action the following year, summoned nearly 100 moneyers to Winchester, and mutilated many of them for shoddy work. The coinage was at its worst during the civil war of Stephen's reign, when rival coins circulated, many of them crude. Henry III in 1257 introduced a new gold coin worth 20 silver pennies, but it was undervalued and therefore melted down: after three years he was obliged to abandon it.

The later Middle Ages saw a great increase in trade. Edward I carried out a grand recoinage in 1279–80, minting new coins, silver halfpennies and farthings, to remove the need to cut, and a fourpence groat, which was not at first successful. Quality was improved, a mint master appointed, and the London mint moved to the Tower. The innovation of Edward III's reign was the introduction in 1344 of gold coins—a florin (6 shillings), half-florin, and quarter-florin. They were augmented by nobles (80 silver pennies), half- and quarter-nobles. Representations became more interesting. The half-florin had a rather benign leopard (which gave the coin its popular name): the noble had an elaborate scene of Edward III, sword drawn, in a two-castled ship, perhaps commemorating his naval victory at Sluys in 1340. The noble was replaced during the reign of Edward IV by a coin of the same value, a noble-angel, which had a representation of the archangel Michael. It was accompanied by a ryal (from French royaux), valued at 10 shillings and with a large Yorkist rose—hence its popular name, rose-noble.

Tudor coinage was marked by three features—fluctuations in the value of the currency; the introduction of a great number of new coins; and the appearance of lifelike representations of the monarchs. Despite the political upheavals of the previous decades, Henry VII inherited a stable currency and bequeathed a strong position to his successor. But Henry VIII's systematic debasement of the currency from 1526 onwards drove up prices. Elizabeth brought the situation under control with some difficulty, admitting that her recoinage of 1560 was ‘bitter medicine’. The new coins included a magnificent golden sovereign by Henry VII in 1489 and a half-sovereign; a gold Crown of the Rose at 5 shillings by Henry VIII and a half-crown which settled down later as a silver coin and ran until the 20th cent.; and a George noble in 1526 on which the patron saint made his first appearance. Edward VI introduced a treble sovereign, sixpence, and threepence; Mary a half-groat; and Elizabeth a rather strange silver 1½d. and ¾d. to facilitate change. Henry VII's silver shilling carried a good likeness of the king, known as the testoon (from French tête). Henceforth the national coinage carried some remarkable portraits—Henry VIII aged on a Bristol groat (1544–7); Edward VI's silver shilling (1550–3); Philip and Mary's sixpence (1554–8); an imperious Elizabeth gold pound (1561–82); a stylish Charles I shilling (1638–9), and a saturnine Charles II crown (1663).

James I celebrated the union of his two kingdoms in 1604 with a gold crown called ‘unite’ or ‘unit’, bearing the title ‘King of Great Britain’ and the legend ‘I will make them one people.’ But a more important development of his reign was the introduction of copper coinage. Lord Harington in 1613 was given a patent to produce copper farthings, known colloquially as Haringtons, with an intermediate status between coins and tokens.

Charles I had a keen interest in art and before 1642 his coinage was of a high standard. The Civil War produced some desperate expedients, particularly ‘siege-money’, made out of any metal to hand and cut into strange shapes. The Commonwealth issued its own coinage, with inscriptions in English: one legend ‘God with us’ prompted cavaliers to the obvious retort that ‘the Commonwealth was on one side and God on the other’. Good likenesses of Cromwell were produced but never issued.

As soon as he returned from his travels in 1660, Charles II tackled the question of the currency. The following year he ordered all coins to be mechanically produced and called in the Commonwealth issues. An innovation was the use of Guinea gold from Africa, which settled at 21 shillings and was called a guinea. The need for small change remained a problem and thousands of tradesmen's tokens circulated. To meet this, Charles introduced copper halfpennies and farthings in 1672: on the new coins, Britannia made her appearance for the first time. But one further step, in 1684, to bring in tin coins proved disastrous, since the metal oxidized rapidly.

Charles was also king of Scotland and of Ireland. The Scottish coinage dated from David I's reign in the early 12th cent. But the number of coins struck was small, there were mints only at Edinburgh, Berwick, and Roxburgh, and what circulation there was came from England. The Scottish coinage had much in common with the English, partly through direct imitation, partly because each copied continental, and especially French, designs. But Scottish coins had their own peculiarities. Their international standing was undermined in the 15th and 16th cents. by persistent debasement. In 1423 the English government forbade the circulation of Scottish coins and at the union of the crowns in 1603 the Scottish pound was fixed at only one-twelfth that of the English. The falling value of the Scottish currency derived in part from the practice of mixing silver with alloy to produce the base metal billon. One result was that Scotland had less trouble about small change than England. James I introduced a billon penny and halfpenny: James III followed with a billon plack (from French plaque) valued at first at threepence and later at sixpence, a half-plack, and a copper farthing (1466); in James V's reign the bawbee (1½d.) and half-bawbee were issued, and in Mary's the hardhead was issued to help ‘the common people’ buy bread, drink, flesh, and fish. The billon coinage was discontinued after 1603, but twopence pieces in copper called hardheads, bodles, or turners continued to be issued until the Act of Union.

The earliest known Irish coins were minted by Sihtric Olafsson in the Viking kingdom of Dublin after 990 and were copies of English silver pennies. The circulation was probably very limited. No regular coinage was issued until after the Norman Conquest when John introduced coins stamped with a harp. There were no gold coins and, as in Scotland, silver was heavily alloyed. By the reign of Edward IV there were mints at Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Cork, Drogheda, Limerick, and Trim, though the English government would not permit a national currency. In the Tudor period the Irish coinage suffered great debasement, as did the Scots and English, fuelling inflation and damaging trade. In 1689 James II issued a bronze currency known as ‘gun-money’ which, after his defeat at the Boyne, was bought in at metal value—less than 3 per cent of its face value. The fury caused by Wood's halfpence in 1723 had less to do with the coins, which were of respectable quality, than the state of Anglo-Irish relations.

In Wales, no coins were struck until after the Norman invasion. Coin hoards have been found in Wales dating to the 9th, 10th, and 11th cents., but the coins were foreign, mainly English, Viking, or Arabic. Hywel Dda's silver penny (c.940) was minted at Chester, copied an English coin, and may have been a presentation piece. Subsequent Welsh rulers do not seem to have produced their own coins and what circulated were English, though there were mints at Cardiff and Rhuddlan.

One persistent problem was the weight of coins and the hazard of transporting large quantities. Individual merchants and financiers had long issued personal bills of exchange, from which developed the cheque and the banknote—at first for special named customers, then for general use. The earliest extant cheque, dated 1659, is preserved in the Institute of Banking Library and is for £400. On 29 February 1668 Pepys recorded sending his father a goldsmith's note for £600. Paper credit expanded rapidly and by the end of the 17th cent. it was calculated that England and Wales had £11.6 million circulating as coins, but tallies, banknotes, and bills worth £15 million. The Bank of England began issuing large-denomination printed notes in 1725 with, in effect, the credit of the government behind them. Nevertheless, many people preferred their local banks. Banknotes are still issued on the authority of the Bank of England and contain the comforting message from the chief cashier ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of … pounds’. Scotland retains its own banknotes which also circulate in the north of England.

At the time of the great recoinage of 1696 bimetallism was still the basis of the British currency, silver and gold providing the mainstay. Later in the 18th cent. declining production of silver made it excessively expensive and the currency went over to gold almost completely. When in turn gold became in short supply during the Revolutionary wars, the government declared banknotes to be legal tender. There was continuing difficulty about small change. Some of George III's copper coins (‘cartwheels’) were too heavy to be practicable since they were intended to contain their own value in copper. The result was that the country was again flooded with token coins.

Reorganization of the currency after the Napoleonic wars became a major political question and it was decided to go to one standard—gold. Silver tokens were prohibited in 1813 and copper tokens in 1818. The gold standard was retained, with increasing difficulty, until the economic crisis of 1931.

Four developments in the 20th cent. may be noted. Substantial inflation, particularly after the Second World War, caused several coins to be abandoned as their purchasing power dwindled: the farthing, beloved of haberdashers, was withdrawn in 1960, and the halfpenny, which survived decimalization in 1971, succumbed in 1984. Secondly, in 1971 the whole coinage was decimalized in preparation for Britain's entry into the EEC. Decimalization had been advocated as early as 1849 when the florin had been introduced as one-tenth of a pound. Thirdly, there was fierce debate in the 1990s whether Britain should join a European currency and, if so, what inscriptions the coins should bear. Fourthly, the spread of credit cards and electronic banking meant that coinage played a smaller part in financial transactions than in the past, heralding the day when money would be carried only for sundry purchases like sweets and newspapers.

J. A. Cannon

Bibliography

Davies, G. , A History of Money: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (Cardiff, 1994);
Feavearyear, A. , The Pound Sterling: A History of English Money (2nd edn. Oxford, 1963);
Oman, C. , The Coinage of England (Oxford, 1931);
Sutherland, C. H. V. , English Coinage 600–1900 (1973).