Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience) "reduced to misery". The "Holy Thursday" referred to in the poem is Ascension Thursday, which in the Church of England and other parts of the Anglican Communion, can be used a synonym for the same feast; Thomas Pruen uses the term to refer to Ascension Day in his "Illustration of the Liturgy of the Church of England", published in 1820; however use of the term "Holy Thursday" to mean Ascension Day is rare, and the term is more generally applied by most Christian denominations to Maundy Thursday in Holy Week. On Ascension Day a service was held in St. Paul's
Royal Maundy it was felt to be inappropriate to strike Maundy coins in base metal, their fineness was restored to 0.925. On Decimal Day, 15 February 1971, the pound sterling became decimalised, with 100 new pence instead of 20 shillings of 12 pence (240 pence) in a pound. No change was made to the design of the Maundy pieces, and all Maundy pieces, both pre- and post-Decimal Day, are by law deemed denominated in new pence, more than doubling the face value of the pre-1971 pieces. The Maundy pieces continue to use the original obverse design for Queen Elizabeth II by Mary