But sterling as a word has come to stand not just for the currency but also more generally for laudable qualities such as steadfastness, honour and integrity yet, for all that it is so much a part of our lives, its derivation is curiously obscure and elusive. It is a word that we see in the pages of the financial press and also, for instance, on travellers cheques when we go abroad. It seems safe, therefore, to assume that in medieval times, when Latin and English were both in constant use, these two symbols came to be applied to the English shillings and pence as their Latin counterparts became obsolete. The first use of these abbreviations to indicate shillings and pence given in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1387. In the case of the letters s and d it is generally agreed that these stand for the Latin words solidus and denarius, originally Roman. By the time the Bank was founded in 1694 the £ sign was in common use. However, there is in the Bank of England Museum a cheque dated 7 January 1661 with a clearly discernible £ sign. It is not known for certain when the horizontal line or lines, which indicate an abbreviation, first came to be drawn through the L. The name shilling derives from the Old English scilling or scillinga meaning cutting or slice one of the early moves towards coinage was the recognition of ornaments such as gold or silver armlets as a medium of exchange, and the division of them into sections (cuttings). Before Henry’s death it had been joined by a silver shilling, destined to become one of the most useful denominations in the English currency. Not until 1489, during the reign of Henry VII, did a pound coin emerge in the form of a magnificent gold sovereign deliberately intended to convey the strength and majesty of the new Tudor dynasty. With the silver pennies of William I, however, the weight became much more consistent and it is from this time that the pound as a unit of currency of 240 pence has its origin. The first English pennies were struck in silver in the seventh century, but these and subsequent coins varied considerably in weight and it was in practice only occasionally that 240 pennies weighed a pound.
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