Anglo Saxon pound

The pound was a unit of account in Anglo-Saxon England, equal to 240 silver pennies and equivalent to one pound weight of silver. It evolved into the modern British currency, the pound sterling.

The accounting system of 12 pence = 1 shilling, 20 shillings = 1 pound was adopted from that introduced by Pepin or even earlier to the Frankish kingdom (see French livre). King Offa of Mercia is credited with causing the widespread adoption of the silver penny and the pound as a unit of account. Thomas Snelling writes that the division of the pound into 12 ounces was in use with the Romans, and the division of ounces into 20 pennyweights was introduced into France by Charlemagne, and then brought to England by William the Conqueror.

The Latin word for "pound" is libra. The £ or ₤ is a stylised writing of the letter L, a short way of writing libra. This is similar to how a pound of mass is abbreviated "lb". Up until 1972, especially on typewriters or keyboards without a "£" symbol, it was common to write "L" or "l" instead of "£".

The pound in use in King Offa's day, also known as the Saxon pound or moneyers' pound, remained essentially unchanged until 1527, by which time it had come to be known as the Tower pound, after the Tower of London. In 1527, the Tower pound was replaced by the English modern troy pound of 373,3 g, which was, by law, equal to exactly 16/15 of a Tower pound. The fundamental unit of the pre-1527 English weight system known as Tower weights, was a different sort of grain known as the "wheat grain". The Tower pound had a mass of 240 x 32 = 7680 wheat grain. The Tower wheat grain was defined as exactly  ⁴⁵⁄₆₄ of a troy grain. Expressed in modern English troy grains, the Tower pound was 7680 x  ⁴⁵⁄₆₄ = 5400 modern troy grains (350 g). The Tower pound was divided into 12 ounces, each ounce into 20 pennyweights, and each pennyweight into 24 barleycorns. There were thus 480 barleycorns to a Tower ounce, 5760 barleycorns to a Tower pound of 350 g. The Anglo-Saxon pound (Saxon pound, moneyers' pound or Tower pound) remained in use for silver and gold coinage in England after the adoption of the medieval troy pound of 367.5 g. This pound of 12 ounces was in use in Troyes (Champagne fairs) where the mark of 8 ounces (also the Paris mark) weighed 245 g. The medieval troy pound weighed 240 pennyweights of 1.53 g or 24 medieval troy grains (1/5760 part of the new pound and heavier than the real barleycorn). The Tower pound remained in use for weighing gold and silver until 1527.