Re: USAGE: Currencies and -s

At 10:23 pm -0400 30/8/00, Nik Taylor wrote:
>John Cowan wrote:
>> A guinea, of course, is a money of account worth 21 shillings;
>
>I find that an odd amount, as a pound was 20 shillings.  Why did they
>have two coins so close in value?
As John says, it was a 'money of account'; there was no guinea coin when I
was young (the last were minted in 1813), but guineas were still widely
used as a money of account.

Originally, however, it was a coin and was worth just 20 shillings, i.e.
one pound sterling.  The first were struck in 1663 and were, of course,
pound coins.  They gained the nickname 'guinea' because they were made of
gold from Guinea in West Africa and, in the early issues, bore a small
elephant beneath the king's head.

But the trouble with gold coinage is that if inflation weakens the pound,
the coin becomes worth more than its face value!  And altho it began its
life, so to speak, as one pound stirling, in actual practice its value
varied.  In 1694, e.g., it was as high as 30 shillings, i.e. one & a half
pounds.  However, in 1717 its value was fixed at 21 shillings and remained
there till its demise.

As I said above, the last coins were minted in 1813 and they ceased to be
legal tender in 1817.  But the guinea lived on as a money of account right
up to (and, in some places at least, beyond) decimalization in 1971.
Right up to the end of the 1960s it was customary for professional fees &
subscriptions, race horses, antiques, valuable paintings and other luxury
items to be priced in guineas.
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At 8:56 pm -0400 30/8/00, Padraic Brown wrote:
>On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, John Cowan wrote:
[....]
>>Quoth A.E. Housman (1859-1936):
>>
>># When I was one-and-twenty
>># I heard a wise man say,
>># "Give crowns and pounds and guineas
>># But not your heart away;
>
>Hm. Could you give your heart away if it were engraved _on_
>a guinea?
>
>>A guinea, of course, is a money of account worth 21 shillings; I
>>don't know when they were last actually coined.
>
>1813. I think they were dumped with the recoinage.
Which recoinage?  They were indeed last minted in 1813 and ceased to be
legal tender in 1817.  But then, the Victorians did at some stage prepare
for decimalization.  The Florin was introduced by them as a tenth of a
pound which, of course, it was as it was worth 2 shillings.  There was,
apparently, a limited amount of dimes (1/10 of a Florin) and cents (1/100
of a Florin) minted, but never issued as the Victorian decimalization was
never implemented.

To return to the guinea - this, as a money of account, lasted right up till
decimalization and, at least in Abergavenny market, well past
decimalization where it was, of course, no longer the good ol' 21
shillings, but 1.05 pounds!  I suspect, however, they've gone even from
there now.

But "give crowns and pounds and guineas" was quite intelligible to me when
I read Housman in my late teens.  It didn't seem particularly archaic ('cos
it wasn't) and certainly conjured up no pictures of 18th century
Enlightment.

Ray.




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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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