Shilling

an English silver coin. It is the twentieth part of a pound. One shilling is equivalent to twelve pence. The equivalent in United States currency is about twenty-four and one-third cents. A shilling of varying value was in use among the Anglo-Saxons. The first English shillings of exact value were coined by Henry VII. They weighed 144 grains. The present English shilling weighs a trifle over eighty-seven grains. The first colonial shillings were coined in Boston. The first struck were mere circular silver blanks having New England on one side near the border, and XII, to indicate twelve pence, on the reverse. They are known as the New England shilling. They were followed by the willow-tree, oak-tree, and pine-tree shillings. Their weight was twenty-two grains. Specimens are now rare and fetch a high price from collectors of old coins. A fine specimen of the pine-tree shilling is quoted at twenty-five dollars. In 1659 Lord Baltimore had shillings coined for the use of his colonists in Maryland. They bore his profile on one face, his arms and the figure 12 on the other. At the close of the Revolutionary War the shilling in New England and Virginia was the sixth part of a dollar; in New York and North Carolina, an eighth; in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, two fifteenths; in South Carolina and Georgia, three-fourteenths. In the United States the term shilling is still in use colloquially. With the country storekeeper of New England, it means a quarter of a dollar; in the West, the shilling is twelve and one-half cents. In England, to "cut one off with a shilling" means to bequeath a disinherited heir the sum of one shilling for the sake of legality. In enlisting soldiers, a shilling was pressed upon a new recruit as "earnest money." To "accept the king's shilling" was a token of enlistment, after which it was too late to back out. See Coin; Money; Mint