Origin
The first guinea was produced on 6 February 1663, and was made legal currency by a Proclamation of 27 March 1663. One troy pound of 11/12 finest gold would make 44½ guineas, each weighing 129.4 grains.
The denomination was originally worth one pound, or twenty shillings, but an increase in the price of gold during the reign of Charles II led to its being traded at a premium. In 1670 the weight of the coin was reduced from 8.4–8.5 g to 8.3–8.4 g, but the price of gold continued to increase, and by the 1680s the coin was worth 22 shillings.
The diameter of the coin was 1 inch (just over 25 millimetres) throughout Charles II's reign, and the average gold purity (from an assay done in 1773) was 0.9100. "Guinea" was not an official name for the coin, but much of the gold used to produce the early coins came from Guinea in Africa.
The coin was produced each year between 1663 and 1684, with the elephant appearing on some coins each year from 1663–65 and 1668, and the elephant and castle on some coins from 1674 onward.
Read more about this topic: Guinea (British Coin)
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)
“All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)