Understanding the old currency

The following piece was forwarded to my typist by his RL mother who is heavily involved in family genealogy. I thought it might be of interest to some in understanding why the rather odd system of pounds, shillings and pence came into existence.


The following review of Scots currency in late 1500s and early 1600s may be of help to those transcribing a will they have downloaded from that time period. It discusses how prices were set for convenience and the dual system of merks and pounds. An inventory from a will probated in 1590 is used to demonstrate the pricing system. The meanings of various words used in estate inventories is also provided along with their Scots spellings. The abbreviations "s" for shilling and "d" for pence are used in Scottish wills and will be used here. The abbreviation "s" for shilling refers to its predecessor in Roman times the solidus a, small gold coin. Shilling is also abbreviated with "/" which stands for a "long s," the tail of which is easily recognizable in old Scots writing looking much like a slash with a loop at the top. Although the abbreviation in Scots wills looks more like a squashed "8" or a circle with a line through it. The abbreviation "d" for penny refers the denarius, a small silver coin widely circulated in Roman times.

POUNDS AND SHILLINGS: At first, particularly for a modern individual used to dealing in dollars and cents where sums of money are written basically as decimal fractions, the system appears to have been invented by a school teacher who delighted in torturing students. The American monetary system is based on arithmetic using a "base 10" system, i.e. 10 pennies make a dime, and 10 dimes make a dollar seems to be much simpler and easier to use from an entirely "biased" and modern point of view.

The British or Scots currency system of pounds, shillings and pence actually depends on a combination of arithmetic systems. It is made of a penny, base 12, i.e. 12 pence makes the next higher denomination, a shilling. The shilling is a base 20 coin, i.e. 20 shillings make a pound. The pound can be represented by either 20 shillings or 240 pence. At a first glance, the arithmetic to move from the base 12 penny to the base 20 shilling and then to a pound appears to be very tedious. Why would anyone want to essentially make a currency exchange calculation just to use the next highest denomination of coin? Why not use a pound of 100 pence and write currency amounts as simple decimal fractions? (The British Government did do that in 1971.)

The answer for Scotland of the 1500s lies in tools and traditions that were used in recording currency amounts in legal documents such as wills. In the 1500s, Scotland was just beginning to use the Scots language instead of Latin for legal documents. Along with Latin, educated persons preparing such documents inherited Roman numerals with all those letters. Arabic numerals, with their unique concept of zero and ease of working in base 10, were still somewhat new and unfamiliar things. In his 1729, Essay on the Trade and Improvement of Ireland, Arthur Dobbs, one time Surveyor General of Ireland and Governor of colonial North Carolina, introduced average tonnages using decimal fractions. In a footnote, he stated ". . . those who don't understand [decimal fractions], may safely omit them, they being only the 1/10 and 1/100 of an Unite." In other words, even in the 1700s decimal fractions were not common. Writing any fraction with Roman numerals was impractical. If the numbers in common use are suitable only to integers or whole numbers, how do we deal with fractions? We simply avoid them.

To avoid fractions you need a number system where division by small numbers results in an integer number. The pound, shilling and pence system does just that. Any number, 1 through 20 can be divided into a pound of 20 shillings and the remainder will be 9 or less, i.e. it can be expressed as pence, 12 of which equal one shilling. The twelve pence of a shilling are equally divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. The 240 pence in a pound are equally divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 12. The system can handle nearly all of the common, small fractions as whole numbers of shillings and pence.

MERKS [pron. Mark]: Scots added their own unique currency denomination, the merk, to this complex system. The merk is primarily a unit to account for and measure the rent of land. Frequently in Scots land records one sees references such as "the 5 merk land of Killasser". These are references to the amount of annual rent generated by the property. Such rent was often paid in produce from the land rather than in cash which was in limited supply at that time. However such "in-kind" payments needed some way to compare payments in barley or oats with payments in sheep, cows, or oxen. This is where the merk came in to play. Obviously pricing agricultural produce in merks makes it easy to determine how much of each product is required to make the rent payment. On the other hand, since the merk was more of an accounting term, you did not take the oats, barley or live stock to the market and sell it for merks. You sold it for pounds, shillings and pence.

This resulted in a dual pricing system. Agricultural produce was priced in merks for rent payments and in pounds for sale in the commercial market to generate cash. Now we have even more arithmetical conversions and calculations to make as currency changes from pence to shillings to pounds and merks. The Scots, living up to their reputation for being thrifty, set the prices of agricultural products in such a way as save time in making these conversions. They set prices in pounds at multiples of merks. At a glance, a clerk could look at a price in pounds, shillings and pence and know the price in merks and vice versa.

It is one thing to say "In 1603, the merk, worth 13 shillings and 4 pence, was mostly a unit of account," and leave the researcher to begin making calculations. It is quite another to see how this apparently cumbersome currency system worked in practice in the Scotland of the late 1500s and early 1600s. The Scottish clerks used merks and pounds interchangeably as most convenient to them, always remembering their difference in value. Being on the lookout for a price in shillings and pence and a total in merks or vice versa can save some gray hair and frustration.

As noted, the merk was worth 13s and 4d. This is 2/3 of a pound. Stating the pound in terms of merks, it is worth 1 1/2 merks. Frequently the value of a given number of merks was stated in shillings and pence even though it involved more than one pound. This gave Scots of the late 16th century a set of multiples to be used for pricing items in terms of both systems which could be learned like a student learns multiplication tables. The table below gives the value of merks in shillings and pence, as it was sometimes written as well as in pounds, shilling and pence:

Merks	s	d	£	s	d	Merks	s	d	£	s	d
½	6	8		6	8	4	53	4	2	13	4
1	13	4	-	13	4	6	-	-	4	-	-
1½	20	-	1	-	-	8	-	-	5	6	8
2	26	8	1	6	8	10	-	-	6	13	4
2½	33	4	1	13	4	20	-	-	13	6	8
3	-	-	2	-	-	30	-	-	20	-	-

Let's look at how this pricing system works out in an actual will.

Gotfray McCulloch of Ardwell, Parish of Toskartoun, Sheriffdom of Wigtoun, dated 20 Nov 1588 made by the hearth of the mansion at Ardwell. Died 23 Dec 1588. Will proved 4 Aug 1590 showing guids, geir & sowmes of money on inventory:

Item	Merks	£	s	d
Ky (cows)	10	6	13	4
Young quoyis (2-yr old heifers)	6	4	-	-
Drauen oxin(draft oxen)	12	8	-	-
Old shepe (sheep)	1½	-	20	-
Hoggis	1	-	13	4
Wedderis (rams)	1½	-	20	-
1-yr old stirkis (steers)	2½	-	3	4
2-yr old quoy (heifer)	4	-	53	4
Meiris younger (young mares)	10	6	13	4
1-yr old staigis (colts)	5	3	6	8
Wark horse (work horse)	10	6	13	4
Big horse	30	20	-	-
3-yr old bull stott (castrated ox)	6	4	-	-
Calvis (calves)	10	6	13	4
Bolls aittis small measur (oats)	2½	-	33	4
Bolls beir small measur (barley)	4	-	53	4
Bolls sed yeare beir (seed barley)	4	-	53	4
Stak wt sed yeare - 18 bolls aittis (stack of sheaves with seed oats)	2½	-	33	4
Stak 40 bolls aittis (oats)	2½	--	33	4
Utencils, domiciles & abulyiments (household goods & personal clothes)	-	100	-	-
Merks consignit (consigned, on deposit)	50	33	6	8

Actually the system, when operated by persons familiar with the system and setting prices in convenient multiples of merks, or pounds, shillings and pence, the system becomes much more practical. Using suitable prices, such as 53s 4d or 33s 4d, aided the clerk in summing the values by providing easily recognizable patterns which could be added and multiplied almost as pseudo numbers without having to do the calculations to convert pence to shillings, shillings to pounds and so on. These simplifications allowed the clerk to do arithmetic in merks and convert to pounds using memorized amounts, e.g. 13s 4d and 13s 4d gives two merks or 1£ 6s 8d, or 53s 4d and 13s 4d gives 3 1/2 merks or 3£ 6s 8d. This allowed the clerk to work and write results in either merks or pounds almost unconsciously switching from one system to the other. Prices in standard multiples of merks and pounds greatly reduced the probability of arithmetical errors.

These standard multiples can also be a help to the researcher by providing a recognizable pattern even when the clerk's handwriting is deplorable.