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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. It circulated until 1990.
The value of some coins fluctuated, particularly in the reigns of James I and Charles I. The value of a guinea fluctuated between 20 and 30 shillings before being fixed at 21 shillings in December 1717. These are denominations of British, or earlier English, coins – Scottish coins had different values.
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 ...
Examples of the standard reverse designs minted until 2008. Designed by Christopher Ironside (£2 coin is not shown).. The standard circulating coinage of the United Kingdom, British Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories is denominated in pennies and pounds sterling (symbol "£", commercial GBP), and ranges in value from one penny sterling to two pounds.
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 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 ...
Cash in the colonies was denominated in pounds, shillings, and pence. [3] The value of each denomination varied from colony to colony; a Massachusetts pound, for example, was not equivalent to a Pennsylvania pound. All colonial pounds were of less value than the British pound sterling. [3]