Penny reign of that the florin and noble established a common gold currency in England. The earliest halfpenny and farthing (¼d.) found date to the reign of Henry III. The need for small change was also sometimes met by simply cutting a full penny into halves or quarters. In 1527, Henry VIII abolished the Tower pound of 5400 grains, replacing it with the Troy pound of 5760 grains and establishing a new pennyweight of although, confusingly, the penny coin by then weighed about 8 grains, and had never weighed as much as this 24 grains. The last silver pence for general
Troy weight system. The origin of the troy weight system is unknown. Although the name probably comes from the Champagne fairs at Troyes, in northeastern France, the units themselves may be of more northern origin. English troy weights were nearly identical to the troy weight system of Bremen. (The Bremen troy ounce had a mass of 480.8 British Imperial grains.) An alternative suggestion is that the weights come from the Muslim domains by way of the Gold Dirhem (47.966 British Imperial grains), in the manner that King Offa's weights were derived from the silver Dirhem (about 45.0 British grains). According to Watson,