From ancient times the British gave the names to their coins. Thus, the coins of the King Henry the third were called "cart-wheel", the ones of the King Jacob the sixth were "hats" and the money of the Queen Victoria's reign - "pecks". In the second half of the twelve century sterling was called pound. Every standard pound included twelve shillings, each shilling contained twelve pence or pennies as they called them. Penny was also divided by half, one half of which was called forint. Queen Elizabeth was the first to conduct reform of the currency in 1560 which resulted in renewal of the coins in which old coins were replaced by the new ones, it led to devaluation of the currency which was stopped by the strengthen of exchange inflation. Then in 1694 there was another turn in the history of the livre anglais - it was emission of paper money. And within the period from seventeen to nineteen centuries the pound sterling was in the lead in currency rates of all other currencies in the world. But things have changed after the Second World War when the pound yielded a dollar.
In 1971 Britain transfers currency system into decimal counting, and since the pound sterling is divided into a hundred subsidiary units - pence. Before 1982 every coin bared a word "new" on it as the traces of the reform. Livre anglais minted today has preserved all the characteristics and value of the one which was minted during the reign of the Queen Victoria. The history of the Pound counts not lesser than 500 years. That coin first appeared in the reign of the King Henry the Seventh, but its modern mass and size were set as a standard only in 1816 for the coins which emissions was planned a year later. Before that and since the gold in these coins let out became a very wise mean of investment and a good financial settlement in between different countries.
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