Penny

History

The medieval silver penny was modelled on similar coins in antiquity, such as the Greek drachma, the Carthaginian shekel, and the Roman denarius. Forms of these seem to have reached as far as Norway and Sweden. The use of Roman currency in Britain, seems to have fallen off after the Roman withdrawal and subsequent Saxon invasions. Charlemagne's father Pepin the Short instituted a major currency reform around aiming to reorganize Francia's previous silver standard with a standardized .940-fine () weighing 1⁄240 pound. (As the Carolingian pound seems to have been about 489.5 grams, each penny weighed about 2 grams.) Around 790, Charlemagne introduced a new .950 or .960-fine penny with a smaller diameter. Surviving specimens have an average weight of although some estimate the original intended mass at But despite the purity and quality of these pennies, they were often rejected by traders throughout the Carolingian period, in favor of the gold coins used elsewhere; this led to repeated legislation against such refusal, to accept the king's currency. Some of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms initially copied the solidus, the late Roman gold coin; at the time, however, gold was so rare and valuable that even the smallest coins had such a great value that they could only be used in very large transactions and were sometimes not available at all. Around 641–670, there seems to have been a movement to use coins with lower gold content. This decreased their value and may have increased the number that could be minted, but these paler coins do not seem to have solved the problem of the value and scarcity of the currency. The miscellaneous silver sceattas minted in Frisia and Anglo-Saxon England after around 680 were probably known as "pennies" at the time. (The misnomer…