What was the currency in England during the reign of Cromwell?

Answer 1

Forget the long, boring, irrelevant one above.
Yes, it was pounds shillings, pence - it took fools like Heath and Wilson to get rid of that, not a great man like Cromwell.
The design on the coinage was altered after the beheading of Charles I. The new coins - in gold the unite (pound) and half-unite, and in silver the crown, half-crown, shilling, sixpence, halfgroat or twopence, penny and halfpenny - had on the obverse (heads) the shield with st George's cross in a laurel wreath and around them the words, THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, and on the reverse two shilds side by side, one with a St George's Cross and the other with the Irish Harp, and around them the legend GOD WITH VS.and the date at the top. These were called 'breeches money' as the shilds side by side looked like an old pair of breeches or knee-length trousers.
The halfpenny was very, very small and there was no farthing. Charles I had given licenses to make copper farthings and this was made one of the objections against him. So for small change people started making their own - there are a lot of copper halfpence and farthings issued by pubs and businesses.
In 1656 Cromwell started the idea of a personal coinage. The new coins were machine-made - Britain's first modern coins, in fact. On the obverse they have a fine portrait of Cromwell and the words OLIVAR D G RP ANG SCO HIB &C PRO (Oliver, by the grace of God, Protector of the Republic of England, Scotland, and Ireland etc). On the reverse there is a crowned shield comprising St Georges and St Andrew's crosses and the Irish harp, with a lion representing the arms of the Cromwell family in the middle, with the words around, PAX QUAERITVR BELLO (peace is sought by war). These coins are. in gold the fifty shillings, broad (pound), and half-broad, in silver the crown, half-crown, shilling and sixpence, and in copper the farthing with on the reverse the words CHARITIE AND CHANGE.
The Commonwealth coins will cost you hundreds these days, and the Cromwell coins thousands, apart from the shilling. The tokens, in contrast, are still quite cheap.

Answer 2

Read this

The Disastrous History of Money : English Wooden Sticks
by Paul Tustain


Charles II was king of England from 1660 - 1685, when wooden sticks were being used as a form of money until the system collapsed. The story has obvious parallels to the modern world. Here it is.

While the Pilgrim Fathers were busy founding America their English puritan brothers were also shaking off religious oppression. By 1650 Oliver Cromwell had taken power for the people, chopped off the king's head, and in a familiar pattern was lording it over a parliament which he dissolved when it threatened to oppose him. He died passing power directly to his feeble son, apparently untroubled by charges of hypocrisy.

With Cromwell gone England decided that if it were going to have a king it ought to be a proper one. So Charles II was sought out and granted a restored throne in 1660, 11 years after his father's beheading.

The new king's powers were diminished. Much of what he needed to do now depended on the co-operation of parliament, so an uneasy truce prevailed. In particular the royal tax raising privilege had been lost, leaving Charles forever begging taxes from his new governing partners.

Legislating a tax was one thing; collecting it quite another. There were few useful records, there was no internal revenue service, and it was a job which would certainly require both local knowledge and the occasional use of force, now under the control of parliament too. So tax collection was enabled by a combination of privatisation and delegation. Parliamentarian intermediaries were allocated a region, and then would gather the money in that locality through their own initiatives. For their efforts they received a healthy cut, which helped to motivate them to keep authorising new taxes.

But there remained a problem of Charles' cash resources. Parliament met rarely, and the logistics of tax collection caused long delays. He was still struggling to pay the bills.

At about this time the financial development of London was getting underway. The goldsmiths - whose traditional role was the fabrication of jewellery and plate - were emerging from a number of potential candidates as the trade group which would evolve into modern bankers. Their success grew from the safekeeping role of their vaults through the uncertain period of the civil war, and also from the strength of London's position within growing European trade, with its frequent requirement to exchange foreign coin.

They soon found themselves able to lend as well, and from this they became the middlemen in a developing market in government debt.

It worked like this. Armed with parliamentary permission to raise taxes Charles immediately cashed in by selling specific future tax receipts to the goldsmiths, at a discount to the face value. The goldsmiths needed to be able to honour their private accounts, and unable to distribute the royal debt were rapidly insufficiently liquid to lend the king more. So it was arranged that the debt redemption would in fact be paid not specifically to the original goldsmith lender but to any bearer of the debt, thereby enabling the original lender to sell the debt on and replenish his cash, ready for the next royal loan.

The next problem was how to ensure the new bearer of the debt - not being the original borrower - could reliably identify the authenticity of the bearer debt. And here nature offered an ancient solution.

A piece of wood split down the middle will only match perfectly with its other half. So wooden sticks became a key component of English currency. The government's debt office took a nice looking hazel stick and notched across it various symbols which denoted monetary amounts borrowed and lent. The stick was then split down the middle, with each side showing one end of the notches. One side - which had a wooden handle known as a 'stock' - was held by the king's treasury, while the other was given to the goldsmith, who also got a piece of paper describing the date and circumstances of redemption.

Answer 3

Pounds, shillings, pence, florins

Answer 4

Pounds, shillings, and pence were the legal tender.

Answer 5

Guineas,groats,florins,shillings etc

Answer 6

pounds shillings and pence, right?

Answer 7

sterling, just as it is now...