English Penny

The English penny is a coin and unit of money that has been used in England, and later Britain, since the late eighth century. For most of the Middle Ages it was a small silver coin and almost the only coin in circulation; today the name survives in the bronze-coloured one-penny coin of the decimal pound sterling.

Until decimalisation in 1971, the penny was one 240th of a pound and one twelfth of a shilling. Its abbreviation "d" came from the Latin denarius, a reminder that the penny descended from the Roman and Carolingian silver coinage of continental Europe.

Before the penny, early Anglo-Saxon England used small, thick silver coins now called sceattas. In the second half of the eighth century the kings of Kent and Mercia began striking a thinner, broader silver coin modelled on the new Frankish denier, itself named after the Roman denarius. The issues of Offa, king of Mercia from 757 to 796, are the best known and are usually treated as the start of the English penny.

Later kings brought the coinage under firm royal control. The reform associated with King Edgar around 973 introduced a uniform design across the kingdom's many mints and regular recoinages, a system that survived into the Norman period. The weight of the early penny was roughly 1.3 to 1.5 grams of silver, though it varied between reigns.

After the Norman Conquest the penny came to be known as the "sterling", and its silver standard of about 92.5 per cent fine, later called sterling silver, became a mark of quality. Accounts were kept in pounds, shillings and pence, the £sd system, in which a pound was worth 240 pennies and a shilling 12. Neither the pound nor the shilling existed as a coin for most of the Middle Ages: they served as a unit of account, while the penny did the work of payment. The letters "s" and "d" came from the Roman solidus and denarius.

Because the penny was the only regular coin, small change was often made by cutting pennies into halves and quarters. Edward I's recoinage of 1279 added round halfpennies and farthings, as well as a four-penny groat. Henry III tried a gold penny in 1257, but a lasting gold coinage began only under Edward III, whose first gold florin of 1344 was inspired by the Florentine florin. Similar pound-shilling-penny reckonings existed elsewhere in Europe, such as the French system that included the sou.

Over the centuries the weight of the silver penny was gradually reduced, and Henry VIII's Great Debasement of the 1540s also lowered its silver content, a well-known example of currency debasement later linked to Gresham's law. Sterling fineness was restored under Elizabeth I, but by then the penny was a tiny coin of little use, and larger silver pieces did most of the work. Silver pennies dropped out of general circulation in the seventeenth century, surviving only as ceremonial Maundy money.

Large copper pennies were introduced in 1797, the first being the heavy "cartwheel" penny struck by Matthew Boulton's Soho Mint in Birmingham. Bronze replaced copper in 1860, and the bronze penny, worth one 240th of a pound, stayed in use until decimalisation.

On 15 February 1971 the United Kingdom and Ireland changed to decimal money. The new penny was worth one hundredth of a pound, equal to 2.4 old pence. The word "new" was dropped from the coins in 1982, and from 1992 the coin has been made of copper-plated steel. Ireland kept its own decimal penny under the Irish pound until it adopted the euro. The British one-penny coin remains in issue.

• British Museum – Collection online
• American Numismatic Society