A Farthing, a Quid, a Crown, a Florin, a Groat?

Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away
A. E. Housman

For those of us who are wont to read classics of British literature — or contemporary works set in a historical Great Britain — we’re stuck. Every few pages someone’s buying something or adding up their wealth or simply making some value judgment that might be, “Not worth a farthing,” or “Give the beggar half a crown and send him away.”

What in the heck is a farthing, a quid, a crown, a florin or a guinea? A groat? Not even the most prolific and diligent authors of their day provided an appendix to explain them to their audience outside the borders of the realm — not Dickens, Trollope, Hardy — not one.

I landed in Britain for the first time in 1971, just a few months after the advent of “decimalisation.” The Pound had been redefined. Entirely new paper bills and metal coins were the specie of the land. There were 100 pence to the pound, and I was spared having to understand the cost of something marked £1/1/6. In New Pence, I could find coins to come up with £1.25 with no problem.

Nothing had so wrenched the traditional English soul since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752, requiring Britons to skip 11 days they’d never get back.

My English grandmother had explained multiple times how money worked in her homeland, but it never stuck, and I’m still clueless when I encounter those farthings, florins and groats. If you have the same struggle when you encounter these terms, here’s info you can keep by your bookshelf for your next English novel.

English Money Pre-1971

Pound. The basic unit, still in force, despite whatever else happens with the EU. Originally equal to one pound of silver: the “pound sterling.”

Shilling. There were 20 shillings in a pound.

Penny. 12 pennies in each shilling, thus 240 pennies in a pound.

This “system” makes no sense until you learn it was devised to match the Troy method of weighing precious metals. There were 240 “pennies” in a pound by weight, and an English penny contained 1/240th of a pound of silver.  I don’t think that helps one penn’orth in remembering these values, but that’s the source. Dates back to Henry II, who married Eleanor of Aquitaine, proving how smart he was.

Those three terms are NOT going to get you through your next Dickens novel. We go on.

If You Haven’t Got a Penny, a Ha’penny Will Do

There were two halfpennies (or half-pence) in each penny — actual halfpenny coins circulated. Almost all of you know that’s spelled something like “ha’p’ny” in dialog and pronounced “HAPE-nee.” My grandmother could carry that off, because she was born to it, but I sound pretentious trying it.

Farthing!

Each halfpenny can be divided into two farthings. The root of that word’s immediately obvious once you consider it: four farthings per penny. The word derives from the Old English word for four: feower, and a fourth was a feorthing.

Farthing coins were minted as late as 1956. A fourth of a penny! This is easy!

Still More

There were coins worth two pennies: tuppence.

There were threepenny coins, also called thrup’ny bits: thruppence.

There were six-penny pieces, the piece de resistance of English nomenclature, and you simply have to grow up with the language to carry off “sixpence” convincingly. Half a shilling.

My Personal Sticky Wicket: Crowns!

People in British novels are always spending or loaning or borrowing a crown or a half-crown. I can’t keep this one straight, and probably never will. A crown was five shillings, so a half crown was two shillings, sixpence, written out 2/6 but SPOKEN as “two-and-six.” Except one simply wouldn’t SAY “two-and-six,” but “half a crown.” See how simple this is?

There were crown and half-crown coins.

We’re starting to see why the rest of the world rejoiced in 1971, while at the same time we grasp how dearly the natives must’ve treasured this impenetrable maze they’d constructed. We’re not nearly finished, either.

A Guinea?

A Guinea started out as a pound, minted in gold, not silver. The gold came from the Guinea region of West Africa, hence the name. But gold climbed in value relative to the silver coins, and the worth of the coin increased. Rather than have the country’s standard denomination subject to fluctuation in value, it was eventually standardized at a value of one pound, one shilling: £1/1, or 21 shillings.

Even after the country ceased minting and circulating guineas early in the 19th century, the 21-shilling guinea maintained its cachet, often associated with aristocratic, upper-class activities like livestock auctions, horse races and the payment to tailors, caterers, etc. There are, to this day, livestock auctions and horse races valued in guineas, although no coins exist to match those amounts.

In short, a guinea is a pound-plus-a-shilling. There’s more to it than that, but enough to get you through your next novel or Bertie Wooster story.

The Idiomatic Names

This doesn’t address all our questions, because there are innumerable idiomatic names assigned to coins and values NO storyteller could resist putting into the mouths of characters. Here we go with a list, and I’m reining in my native urge to dig into etymology of some fascinating word-history.

Pound. Also “sovereign.” One might also encounter a “half-sovereign” coin worth 10 shillings.

A PAPER pound note was a “quid.” Now I know. Will I remember?

Two shillings. Also “florin.” Ah, that one’s always been a mystery.

Shilling. Also “bob.”

Penny. Also “copper.”

Sixpence/Sixpenny bit. Also “tanner.”

Four pennies/fourpence. Also “groat,” hence a tuppence or tup’ny is also a “half-groat.”

Three pennies/thruppence/threepenny bit. Also a “Joey.” Can anyone tell me why?

A Wee Bit of Etymology: Symbols and Names

The Pound symbol, £, derives from the “L” in “Libra.”

“Shilling” comes directly from Old English scilling, a silver coin, although the coin’s original name when first minted in the reign of Henry VII was the testoon, from Italian. The OE “SC” was pronounced “sh,” so it’s an ancient word, intact.

Then the puzzling one: “d” as the abbreviation for penny (singular) or plural “pence.” Even here in the States one buys 16d or 8d nails: sixteen-penny/eight-penny nails.

Here, as so often, we get to blame the Romans. The denarius was the standard silver coin of Rome from about 200 b.c.e. to 200 c.e. The abbreviation “d” was a world standard they established, and we still use, and Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Slovenian have related words for value, like dinero.

I’d like to hear from Britons who still encounter these terms. Who’s using them? Where do you hear them? Please leave a comment.

I’ll let Grandma Wharton provide our final lines in a song she loved to sing during the holidays. Sing this with a Yorkshire lilt from Hull, on the banks of the Humber, where she learned it as a girl near the end of the 19th century.

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.
Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do.
If you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you.

© Brad Nixon 2019. Grateful acknowledgment to ProjectBritain.com.