Origin of the pound
The history of the English pound begins with the history
of the English penny. At the beginning of the eighth century
the currency consisted of small silver coins varying in design
according to the fancy of the individual moneyer. These are
known to modern scholars as ’sceattas’, though the laws of
Ine refer to them as ‘pennies’. The earliest form of the word is
‘pending’, and it is believed to come from a coin issued by
Penda, the king who built up the power of Mercia in the
second quarter of the seventh century. 1 However, the con-
tinuous history of the penny begins with the coins struck by
Offa, king of Mercia, about 760. Within a hundred years they
had spread to all the Saxon kingdoms and were being paid
and accepted by tale, 240 of them always being called a
pound. 2 It is not clear what their exact standard weight was
intended to be, and probably it varied a little in the different
kingdoms. A statute of 1266 enacted that the penny should
weigh ‘thirty-two wheat corns in the midst of the ear’, and
there is evidence that this statute merely recorded an old
tradition. Another statute of 1280 laid it down that the penny
should weigh 24 grains, which by weight then appointed were
as much as the former 32 grains of wheat. Thus 24 grains came
to make a pennyweight; and this scale was continued in the
sixteenth century when troy weight began to be used in the
Mint, though pennies had long ceased to weigh as much as
24 troy grains. The Saxon coins still in existence vary in weight
from 18 to 24 troy grains, those of Alfred and his immediate
successors being mostly of the higher weight. Possibly there-
fore Alfred used a pound which was about equal to the troy
pound.