Three florins

Posted by James Briggs on April 26, 2003

In Reply to: Three florins posted by bella on April 26, 2003

:
: Hello! If you go to www.m-w.com/ mw/table/money.htm
: you will find the Merriam-Webster Dictionary's money table, which will show you different monetary names, amounts, symbols and equivalents, which shows a florin as "100 cents" now but old amount was "equal to 2 British shillings".

: Bella.

The name 'florin' transferred to the 2 shilling piece when this coin was introduced in the mid 1800s as the first coin towards the then proposed decimalisation of British currency. This didn't happen to quite the timetable originally planned - it took about another 125 years or so before it actually came about in the 1970s!
In the old days it was 20 shillings to the pound (sterling)and 12 pence to the shilling. Pence were also divided into halves and quarters - half-penny and farthing - 960 of these to the pound!