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The British shilling, abbreviated "1s" or "1/-", was a unit of currency and a denomination of sterling coinage worth 1 ⁄ 20 of one pound, or twelve pence.It was first minted in the reign of Henry VII as the testoon, and became known as the shilling, from the Old English scilling, [1] sometime in the mid-16th century.
A 1933 UK shilling 1956 Elizabeth II UK shilling showing English and Scottish reverses. The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence or one-twentieth of a pound before being phased out during the 1960s ...
Prior to decimalisation in 1971, there were 12 pence (written as 12d) in a shilling (written as 1s or 1/-) and 20 shillings in a pound, written as £1 (occasionally "L" was used instead of the pound sign, £). There were therefore 240 pence in a pound. For example, 2 pounds 14 shillings and 5 pence could have been written as £2 14s 5d or £2/14/5
A shilling was worth twelve pence, [1] [2] and there were 20 shillings to the pound sterling. [3] The English shilling was introduced in the 16th century and remained in circulation until it became the British shilling as the result of the Union of England and Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. [3]
The British Islands (red) and overseas territories (blue) using the Pound or their local issue. Outside the United Kingdom, the British Crown Dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey use the pound sterling as their currencies. However, they produce local issues of coinage in the same denominations and specifications, but with different designs.
Milled shillings of full weight were hoarded and exported to the Continent, while clipped, hand-hammered shillings stayed in circulation (as Gresham's law describes). [67] In the 17th century, English merchants tended to pay for imports in silver but were generally paid for exports in gold.
The British shilling was replaced by a 5 new pence coin worth one-twentieth of a pound. In Europe, decimalisation of currency (as well as other weights and measures) began in Revolutionary France with the law of 1795 ("Loi du 18 germinal an III", 7 April 1795), replacing the £sd accounting system of the Ancien régime with a system of 1 franc ...
It was the first English machine-struck gold coin, originally representing a value of 20 shillings in sterling specie, equal to one pound, [2] but rises in the price of gold relative to silver caused the value of the guinea to increase, at times to as high as thirty shillings. From 1717 to 1816, its value was officially fixed at twenty-one ...