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
Silver center cent of the new nation's coinage should be approximately equal to its face value. Some merchants would refuse to accept coins that did not meet this standard. For most denominations, bullion parity was achieved by producing the coins in a gold or silver alloy. However, the Coinage Act of 1792 specified that the cent was to consist of 11 pennyweight (264 grains or 17.1 g) of pure copper. Such a weight, needed to maintain intrinsic value, would have been too heavy for practical everyday use. U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson suggested an alternative: a coin made of an alloy that