Under Charlemagne the mint weight of France was heavier than the marc of Troyes afterwards adopted as a standard. Adapting the Roman system to the customs of his Teutonic subjects the emperor Karl divided the pound of silver into 20 silver solidi or sols, each equal to 12 silver penings or pennies of about 25 grains which, assimilated to the Roman denarii, were called deniers, also estelins or sterlings. The solidus appears to have corresponded to a Teutonic monetary unit, the shilling, equal to a variable number of penings, which coins were not of uniform value until about Charlemagne’s time.
The Carlovingian systems of coinage had passed to England long before the Norman Conquest, displacing the old Norse and Saxon systems—the Norse, in which the Ore was of 20 silver penings = 1/8 marc or 1/12 lb., and the Saxon Sceatta of 40 Styca, usually equivalent to pence. The shilling, = 1/20 pound of silver pence, became established—‘xxx scyllinge penega,’ thirty shillings of pence (‘Saxon Chronicle,’ 775). The Norman Conquest made no appreciable change in the English customary coinage. The Tower pound of silver which the Normans found established was coined into 240 of the ‘English peny called a sterling,’ each weighing 22-1/2 grains instead of the 25 grains of Charlemagne’s sterlings. Twelve pence made a shilling of 20 to the pound, and twenty pence or pennyweights made an ounce of 12 to the mint-pound.
England soon followed France, but much more slowly, in the usual dwindling of the weight of coins, as the king, pushed for money, ordered his moneyers to melt down the silver pennies and recoin them of lower weight. They remained at 22-1/2 grains down to the time of Edward I. Edward III’s first pennies were of 22-1/4 grains, but in the 18th year of his reign they weighed 20-1/4 grains, in the 20th year 20 grains, and after the 27th year he made the pound of silver yield 300 pennies at 18 grains. He also coined groats (great sterlings or grosses). Silver halfpence (mayles) and farthings (ferlynges) were coined, and a statute specially ordered that no sterling halfpenny nor farthing be molten ‘for to make vessel or any other thing by goldsmiths nor others.’
At this time, if we may believe the Statute of Labourers, one penny was the usual daily pay of the farm-labourer, but mowers were to have fivepence by the acre or the day. Prices of farm-produce were fixed. A penny would buy a chicken or six pounds of bread, 2 pence a fowl, 4 pence a goose.