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A shilling of George III, king at the turn of the 19th century.. The King's shilling, sometimes called the Queen's shilling when the Sovereign is female, [1] is a historical slang term referring to the earnest payment of one shilling given to recruits to the armed forces of the United Kingdom in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, although the practice dates back to the end of the English Civil ...
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.
The English shilling was a silver coin of the Kingdom of England, when first introduced known as the testoon. A shilling was worth twelve pence , [ 1 ] [ 2 ] and there were 20 shillings to the pound sterling . [ 3 ]
Recruitment was entirely voluntary; about 1.3 million men served in the First World War, many on the Western Front, and 2.5 million in the Second. Initially the soldiers and NCOs were Indian, with British officers, but later Indian officers were promoted King's Commissioned Indian Officer.
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 ...
This figure constituted about 40 per cent of all men aged between 18 and 45 years of age. The recruitment initiatives during the war involved a considerable degree of state, social, media and moral pressure brought to bear on eligible males to enlist ("take the king's shilling"), especially in the later years of the war. [4]
The sovereign is a British gold coin with a nominal value of one pound sterling (£1) and contains 0.2354 troy ounces (113.0 gr; 7.32 g) of pure gold.Struck since 1817, it was originally a circulating coin that was accepted in Britain and elsewhere in the world; it is now a bullion coin and is sometimes mounted in jewellery.
Metal tankards often come with a glass bottom. The legend is that the glass-bottomed tankard was developed as a way of refusing the King's shilling, i.e., conscription into the British Army or Navy. The drinker could see the coin in the bottom of the glass and refuse the drink, thereby avoiding conscription.