Royal Mint other manufacturers. The Trial of the Pyx is the procedure in the United Kingdom for ensuring that newly-minted coins conform to required standards. The trials have been held since the twelfth century, normally once per calendar year, and continue to the present day. The form of the ceremony has been essentially the same since 1282. They are trials in the full judicial sense, presided over by a judge with an expert jury of assayers. Since 1871, the trials have taken place at the Hall of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, having previously taken place at the Palace of Westminster. Given
Coins of the pound sterling finally abandoned it in 1992 when smaller, more convenient, "silver" coins were introduced. All coins since the 17th century have featured a profile of the current monarch's head. The direction in which they face changes with each successive monarch, a pattern that began with the Stuarts, as shown in the table below: For the Tudors and pre-Restoration Stuarts, both left- and right-facing portrait images were minted within the reign of a single monarch (left-facing images were more common). In the Middle Ages, portrait images tended to be full face. There was a small quirk in this alternating pattern when Edward