Roman pound of good copper. It was divided, in the same manner as our Troyes
pound, into twelve ounces, each of which contained a real ounce of good
copper. The English pound sterling, in the time of Edward I. contained a
pound, Tower weight, of silver of a known fineness. The Tower pound seems to
have been something more than the Roman pound, and something less than the
Troyes pound. This last was not introduced into the mint of England till the
18th of Henry the VIII. The French livre contained, in the time of
Charlemagne, a pound, Troyes weight, of silver of a known fineness. The fair
of Troyes in Champaign was at that time frequented by all the nations of
Europe, and the weights and measures of so famous a market were generally
known and esteemed. The Scots money pound contained, from the time of
Alexander the First to that of Robert Bruce, a pound of silver of the same
weight and fineness with the English pound sterling. English, French, and
Scots pennies, too, contained all of them originally a real penny-weight of
silver, the twentieth part of an ounce, and the two hundred-and-fortieth
part of a pound. The shilling, too, seems originally to have been
the denomination of a weight. "When wheat is at twelve shillings the quarter,"
says an ancient statute of Henry III." then wastel bread of a farthing shall
weigh eleven shillings and fourpence". The proportion, however, between the
shilling, and either the penny on the one hand, or the pound on the other,
seems not to have been so constant and uniform as that between the penny and
the pound. During the first race of the kings of France, the French sou or
shilling appears upon different occasions to have contained five, twelve,
twenty, and forty pennies. Among the ancient Saxons, a shilling appears at
one time to have contained only five pennies, and it is not improbable that
it may have been as variable among them as among their neighbours, the
ancient Franks. From the time of Charlemagne among the French, and from that
of William the Conqueror among the English, the proportion between the
pound, the shilling, and the penny, seems to have been uniformly the same as
at present, though the value of each has been very different ; for in every