About the British Pound: Where, How, Why and When?

 

When did 'Sterling' first emerge? An Account of Early English Corruption!

The first insight in our series on the fascinating past of the UK currency. We ask, when was the word Sterling first used?

According to Nicolas Mayhew English money was only called sterling in the late 11th / early 12th century.

The first textual reference to the use of the word Sterling, as pertaining to currency, emerges from the autobiography of Guibert of Nogent from 1115.

henry 1 and the first use of the word sterlingNogent writes, in his autobiography, that in 1107 he bribed a group of cardinals with 20 sterling to secure papal confirmation of the election of Waldric, chancellor of Henry 1, as bishop of Laon.

"The earliest firmly dated use of sterling thus involved papal corruption on behalf of a senior English government minister to help secure a lucrative European post," says Nicolas Mayhew, author of Sterling, The History of a Currency.

An early version of the European Union


 

For those Anglophiles who look back with nostalgic reverence to an age when England's monetary system was free from European interference, consider that the root of the UK's currency is firmly rooted in Europe:

In medieval times, "the whole of western Europe was united in its Christian allegiance to Rome, and when the kingdom of England was united under the same lord as the Duchy of Normandy. In monetary terms, although the currencies of Europe already differed significantly from one another, broadly similar accounting conventions were applied from Rome to the Rhine and from Cologne to Carlisle. This system ran from the eight century in Carolingian France until the Revolution and continued in Britain till 1971," says Mayhew.

A pound was made up of 20 shillings, each shilling composed of 12 pennies.

pounds marks pennieswhen was the pound sign made

 

Courtesy of Nicolas Mayhew's book 'Sterling, The History of a Currency.'
Nicolas Mayhew is Keeper of the Heberden Coin Room at the Ashmolean Museum and a fellow of the St Cross College, Oxford.