Pounds Shillings and Pence

The Carolingian currency reforms were the work of the father of Charlemagne, Pepin the Short, who reigned from AD 751 to 768 as the first king of the Carolingian dynasty.

During the Dark Ages, European money was an evermore debased version of the Roman system. People became increasingly distrustful of coinage, and by the late 6th century many areas had returned to a bartering economy. In AD 755, Pepin devised a European monetary system based on a Roman librae (pound weight) of silver: one livre (pound) equalled 20 sol (shillings) equalled 240 denier (pence); 12 denier to the sol.

For the penny, Pepin restored the silver content of a coin already in circulation that was the direct descendant of the denarius, the most common silver Roman coin. It was loosely worth one day's pay for a labourer.

The sol, or shilling,was derived from solidi, originally an Imperial Roman coin introduced by Constantine (who reigned fromAD 306 to 337), so-called from the full Latin solidus nummus - 'solid coin'. The solidi became the money of account in the Byzantine era and was the foundation of the international monetary system for more that 500 years. The shilling bridged the new monetary to the old, important because debts contracted before the Reform were defined in solidi.

Pound and shilling coins, however, were not minted for at least three centuries. The only coin in circulation was the silver penny. Shillings and pounds were 'ghost money' - convenient shorthand for keeping accounts but not actual coins. Rather than writing down 2,400 pennies, it was easier to write or say ten pounds, and rather than write or say 12 pennies, it was easier to refer to it as one shilling.

Pepins' reforms also reduced the number of mints, strengthened royal authority over them and provided for a uniform design of coins. All coins bore the ruler's name, initial or title, signifying royal sanction of the quality of the coins.

It was Charlemagne (who reigned AD 768 to 814) who spread the Carolingian system throughout Western Europe, and it ws enthusiastically embraced in Britain by the powerful Mercian King Offa (reigned AD 757 to796).

The British kept the initial letters of librae, solidi and denari (£/s/d), which were imprinted on coins until decimalisation in 1971.

D.S.Nevin, Stirling