Penny (English coin)

The English Penny, originally a coin of 1.3 to 1.5 g pure silver, was introduced around the year 785 by King Offa of Mercia. These coins were similar in size and weight to the continental deniers of the period, and to the Anglo-Saxon sceats which had gone before it.

Throughout the period of the Kingdom of England, from its beginnings in the 9th century, the penny was produced in silver. Pennies of the same nominal value, one 240th of a pound sterling, were in circulation continuously until the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.

The name "penny" comes from the Old English pennige (pronounced [ˈpɛnijə], roughly "penny-yə"), sharing the same root as the German pfennig. Its abbreviation d. comes from the Roman denarius and was used until decimalisation in 1971.

Anglo-Saxon silver pennies were the currency used to pay the Danegeld, essentially protection money paid to the Vikings so that they would go away and not ravage the land. As an illustration of how heavy a burden the Danegeld was, more Anglo-Saxon pennies from the decades around the first millennium have been found in Denmark than in England. In the reign of Ethelred the Unready (978–1016), some 40 million pennies were paid to the Danes, while King Canute (Knut) (1016–1035) paid off his invasion army with another 20 million pennies. This adds up to about 2,800,000 troy ounces (87 tonnes) of silver, equivalent to £250,000 at the time, and worth about £10 million in today's^[update] money (its purchasing power at that time may have exceeded £100 million and may have been as high as £1 billion of today's currency).

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