A one penny piece from
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penny (pl.
pence or
pennies) is a
coin or a unit of
currency used in several
English-speaking countries.
Pennies appear to have been in use since the first use of minted coinage.
Etymology
Old
English versions of the word penny are
penig,
pening,
penning and
pending; the word appears in German as pfennig and in Dutch as penning. These words are thought by some to have been derived from the German word , meaning "pan" (referring to its shape), or the Dutch word and English word "
pawn", words which mean "a pledge or token".
Origin and history of development
An equivalent to the penny in ancient times was the
Greek drachma. Later came the
Roman denarius.
When Britain was under Roman rule, most of Britain used the coin-based monetary system that was used by the Roman Empire, but their system of coinage soon changed after the Romans left. As the invading
Anglo-Saxons began to settle and establish their own kingdoms, some started to make gold coins based on the old Roman designs or designs copied from the coins used in the Frankish kingdoms. Their monetary system had several serious flaws: First, gold was so valuable, that even the smallest coins were very valuable, thus, these gold coins would only be used in large transactions. Further, gold was very rare, and this rarity prevented such coins from being common enough to use for even large transactions.
Between the years 640 and 670 AD, there seems to have been a movement by the Anglo-Saxons to use less pure gold in coins. This made the coins appear paler, decreased their value, and may have increased the number that could be made, but it still didn’t solve the problems of value and scarcity of coins made mostly of gold.
First pennies
Up to this time, no Anglo-Saxon coins had been minted in any metal besides gold. However, around the year
680 a new type of small silver coin appeared which some have identified these coins as ‘
sceattas’ or '
sceat', but this is probably an error. More likely sceatta was a specific measurement of a precious metal. These new coins were actually called pennies.
thumb|Coin of Eric Bloodaxe. The legend reads "ERIC REX" (King Eric). British Museum.
In
Northumbria, pennies, made of silver, were being minted in the name of
Bishop Eadbert (consecrated between 772 and 782, died between 787 and 789), some in the name of his brother
Archbishop Egbert (the
shilling is one of the oldest of English coins, preceding the penny).
Pepin the Short, in about 735, minted the novus
denarius. The novus denarius was based on the denarius and the penny was based on the novus denarius.
He declared that 240 pennies or
pfennigs should be minted from one
Carolingian pound, approximately , of
silver, so a single coin contained about of silver. (As of May 2009, this would cost about £0.40).
The penny was introduced into England by king
Offa, the king of
Mercia (from 757 until his death in July 796). He who took as a model a coin first struck by
Pippin, father of
Charlemagne. King Offa minted a penny made of silver which weighed 22½
grains or 240 pennies weighing one Saxon pound (or
Tower pound—equal to 5400 grains—as it was afterwards called), hence the term
pennyweight.
The coinage of Offa's lifetime falls essentially into two phases, one of the light pennies of medium flan comparable to those of the reign of Pepin and the first decades of that of Charlemagne in France, and another of heavier pennies struck on larger flans that date from Offa's last years and correspond in size to Charlemagne's novus denarius introduced in 793/4. But the sceat fabric survived in East Anglia under Beonna and until the mid ninth century in Northumbria, while the new-style coinages were not merely those of Offa, but were stuck also by king of East Anglia, Kent, and Wessex, by two archbishops of Canterbury, and even in the name of Offa's queen, Cynethryth.
Henry III in 1257 minted a gold penny which had the value of twenty silver pence. The weight and value of the silver penny steadily declined from 1300 onwards.
The penny, with a few exceptions, was the only coin issued in England until the introduction of the
gold florin by
Edward III in 1343. It was not until the reign of
Edward I.
In 1527 the Tower pound of 5,400 grains was abolished and replaced by the pound of 5760 grains.
Halfpence and
farthings became a regular part of the coinage at that time, money which was created by cutting pennies to halves and quarters for trade purposes, a practice said to have originated in the reign of
Æthelred II.
The last coinage of silver pence for general circulation was in the reign of
Charles II.
Since then silver pence have only been coined for issue as royal alms on
Maundy Thursdays.
First use of copper
Copper halfpence were first issued in Charles II's reign, but it was not until 1797, in the reign of
George III, that copper pence were minted. George III's copper penny weighed 1 oz
avoirdupois. Copper twopences were issued weighing 2 oz in the same year, but they were found too cumbersome and so were discontinued.
The penny that was brought to the Cape was a large coin - 41 mm in diameter, 5 mm thick and 2 oz. On it was
Britannia with a
trident in her hand. The English called this coin
The Cartwheel Penny due to its large size and raised rim, but the
Capetonians referred to it as the
Devil's Penny as they assumed that only the Devil used a trident.
The coins were very unpopular due to their large weight and size.
The first copper coins that Boulton minted for the British Government are known as 'cartwheels', because of their large size and raised rims. The Soho Mint struck of these penny and twopenny pieces in 1797, and issued further copper coins for the Government in 1799, 1806 and 1807. All together the Mint produced over £600,000 worth of copper official English coinage as well as separate copper coins for Ireland and the Isle of Man.
On 6 June 1825
Sir Charles Somerset issued a
proclamation that only
British Sterling would be
legal tender in the Cape. The new British coins (which were introduced in England in 1816), among them being the shilling, six pence of silver, the penny, half penny and quarter penny in copper, were introduced to the Cape. Later two shilling, four penny and three penny coins were added to the coinage. The size and
denomination of the 1816 British coins, with the exception of the four-penny coins, were used in South Africa until 1960.
Use of bronze
In 1860 bronze pennies were introduced in place of copper ones, though they were not entirely made of bronze; instead it was an alloy containing 95 parts of copper, 4 of tin, and 1 of zinc. The weight was also reduced: 1 lb of bronze was coined into 48 pennies, versus 1 lb of copper which was coined into 24 pennies.
Value
The
penny is among the lowest denomination of coins in circulation.
In addition, variants of the word
penny, with which they share a common
root, are or were the names of certain units of currency in non-English-speaking countries:
In the United States and Canada, "penny" is normally used to refer to the coin; the quantity of money is a "
cent". Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, the plural of "penny" is "pence" when referring to a quantity of money and "pennies" when referring to a number of coins. Thus a coin worth five times as much as one penny is worth five pence, but "five pennies" means five coins, each of which is a penny.
When dealing with British or Irish (pound) money, amounts of the decimal "new pence" less than £1 may be suffixed with "p", as in 2p, 5p, 26p, 72p. Pre-1971 amounts of less than 1/- (one shilling) were denoted with a "d" which derived from the term "
denarius", as in 2d, 6d, 10d.
The lettering "NEW PENNY" or "NEW PENCE" was changed to "ONE PENNY", "TWO PENCE" or "FIVE PENCE", on British decimal coinage in 1982.
Irish pound decimal coinage only used "p" to designate units (possibly as this sufficed for both the English word "pence", and Irish form "pingin").
Common
English translations of the
New Testament use the term "penny" to translate
assarion or
denarius.
In the gospel according to Luke
Jesus said, "Five sparrows are sold for two pennies [assaria], aren't they? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God".
In the gospel according to Matthew, referring to a "penny" (denarius), Jesus asked, "Whose is this image and superscription?"
Criticism
Handling and counting penny coins makes
transaction costs that may be higher than a penny. It has been claimed that for
micropayments the
mental arithmetic costs more than the penny. Australia now uses 5¢ as its lowest denomination.
Changes in the price of metal
commodity, combined with the continual debasement of paper currencies, causes the metal value of pennies to exceed their face value. Several nations have stopped minting equivalent value coins, and efforts have been made to end the routine use of pennies in several countries, including Canada and the United States.
Pennyweight
In the US, the length and diameter of a nail is designated by its
penny size. This unit's abbreviation is
d (e.g. 10d for 10 penny nails), as for British pence before decimalization. A smaller number indicates a shorter, thinner nail and a larger number indicates a longer, thicker nail (e.g. common 10d nails are in diameter and long). Nails under , often called brads, are sold mostly in small packages with only a length designation (e.g. in (12 mm), in (28 mm), etc.).
It is commonly believed that the origin of the term "penny", in relation to nail size, is based on the old custom in England of selling nails by the hundred. A hundred nails that sold for six pence were "six penny" nails. The larger the nail, the more a hundred nails would cost, hence the larger nails have a larger number for their
penny size. This however is a false legend: the reference is instead to the nominal
mass of the nail expressed in
pennyweight (dwt), of a
Troy ounce. This, anciently, was the defined weight of a silver penny, of a pound sterling.
Although the pennyweight was officially abolished in the
United Kingdom by the
Weights and Measures Act of 1878, its legacy continues in the classification of nails.
Idioms
To
"spend a penny" in British
idiom means to
urinate. The etymology of the phrase is literal; some public toilets used to be coin-operated, with a pre-decimal penny being the charge levied. Eventually, at around the same time as the introduction of
decimal coinage,
British Rail gradually introduced better public toilets with the name
Superloo and the much higher charge of 6d (p) .
Finding a penny is sometimes considered lucky and gives rise to the saying, "Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck." This may be a corruption of "See a pin and pick it up, all the day you'll have good luck" and similar verses, as quoted in The Frank C. Brown collection of
North Carolina folklore and other places.
List of pennies
See also
