J. ST. J.L.

_Fraser's Magazine_.

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RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.


HISTORY OF THE PENNY.

(_For the Mirror_.)


"She sighs and shakes her empty shoes in vain,
No _silver-penny_ to reward her pain."

_Dryden_.

According to Camden and Spelman, the ancient English penny[2] was the
first silver coin struck in England, and the only one current among our
Saxon ancestors.

In the time of Ethelred, it was equal in weight to our threepence. Till
the time of King Edward I. the penny was struck with a cross, so deeply
indented in it, that it might be easily broken, and parted on occasion
into two parts, thence called _half-pennies_; or into four, thence called