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Coin

weights.

In pursuance of the Coinage Act, 1870, standard weights are kept of the current coins of the realm of the following denominations. These standards are made of gold, palladium, silver, and bronze :

Five sovereigns, two sovereigns, sovereign, half-sovereign, crown, half-crown, double-florin, florin, shilling, sixpence, groat or fourpence, three-pence, twopence, silver penny; also bronze penny, half-penny, and farthing.

The Act specifies the weights of the coins, and provides that in making the coins a "remedy," or variation from true standard weight may be permitted. The standard weight of the sovereign and half-sovereign, for instance, is 123-27447 and 61-63723 grains respectively; and the least current weight is 122.5 and 61.125 grains respectively. The remedy on the sovereign and half-sovereign coins has, under the Coinage Act, 1891, been fixed at 0.2 and 0·15 grain, and the Act provides that a loss exceeding 3 grains should be primâ facie evidence that the coin has been impaired, diminished, or lightened otherwise than by fair wear and tear.

Coin weights, for bankers use are verified and stamped, if not less in weight than the weight of the lightest coin for the time being legally current, and small brass coin weights or brass discs representing the weight of the sovereign and half-sovereign so verified are just weights for determining the weight of gold and silver coin.

The following are the legal weights of the coins of the realm:

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Coin weights are of ancient origin, as is shown by a catalogue of Arabic glass weights in the British Museum prepared by Mr S. Lane-Poole. Weights in the form of small glass discs were used by the Arabs from the year A.D. 717 in testing the weights of coins; and such discs had inscribed on them their denominations as:-

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Weight of a fels of twenty keerats" (56 grains.) Benedictory phrases are sometimes to be found on such weights, as :

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Closely allied to stamped glass weights are the curious glass verification stamps, glass discs, or "bottle-stamps which were placed (A.D. 65 to 132) on Egyptian glass measures of capacity of the form of a bottle.

There was formerly at the English Royal Mint an officer called a "Weigher or Stamper of Money Weights,"

The Pyx

the Trial

whose duty it was to test all coin weights, which duty has since, by the Acts 33 and 34 Vict. c. 10, and 41 & 42 Vict. c. 49. s. 39, passed to the Standards Department.

In connection with the standard coin weights, reference Chapel an 1 may here be made to the Pyx Chapel or Chamber, at Westminster Abbey, a depository for standards since the Norman period.

of the Coinage.

In ancient times, and probably since the Norman period, the Chamberlains of the Exchequer had the custody of the "King's Standards," which at one time were kept in the Pyx Chapel at Westminster Abbey.

Of the Pyx Chapel, Dean Stanley has given an interesting description in his "Memorials of Westminster Abbey." In the Eastern Cloister is an ancient double door made of oak, each door having three locks, which admits to the Pyx Chapel or Chamber, a building belonging to the Norman substructure underneath the dormitory, and which was "no less than the Treasury of England, a grand word, which, whilst it conveys us back to the "nost primitive times, is yet big with the destinies of the present and the future of that sacred building, in which were hoarded the treasures of the nation." *

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"It was probably almost immediately after the Conquest "that the Kings determined to lodge their treasure 'under

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the guardianship of the 'inviolable sanctuary which

"St. Peter had consecrated, and the bones of the Confessor had sanctified.'

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Two views of the interior of the Pyx Chamber are given in Figures 25 and 26. The altar shown therein is of later date than the chapel, and it appears that at one time it may have been used by the King's moneyers for Coinage purposes. On the right and left of the pillar shown in Figure 26, which stands in the middle of the chamber

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