History of the English penny (1485–1603)
The History of the English penny from 1485 to 1603 covers the period of the Tudor dynasty. Henry Tudor, who reigned as King Henry VII between 1485 and 1509, had a rather tenuous claim on the throne, being the Lancastrian claimant via an illegitimate descendant of Edward III when all the more senior candidates had been killed off in the Wars of the Roses, he brought the wars to a conclusion with his 1485 victory at The Battle of Bosworth and subsequently consolidated this power through a variety of means, including his marriage to Elizabeth of York Henry VII's reign was plagued by pretenders to the throne, whose existence was a result of the King's insecure grasp of power. He was able to subdue each of these attempted usurpers without particular difficulty; the whole style of Henry's coinage marked a break with what had gone before — the king's bust becomes much more lifelike, the shields on the reverse become much more detailed. Henry's first coinage is like that of Henry V and VI, minted at London, Canterbury and York the inscription is one of a variety of HENRIC DI GRA REX ANG — Henry by the grace of God King of England.
Soon, Henry introduced what is known as the Sovereign coinage, so-called because the king is depicted seated on a throne, while the reverse shows the royal shield over a cross. This issue is regarded as marking the division between the coins of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance in England; the Sovereign coinage was minted at London and York, inscribed with one of a variety of HENRICUS DI GRA REX ANG. Henry VIII is one of England's more interesting monarchs, not just for having married six times, but numismatically too. Henry's first coinage still used his father's portrait. With higher bullion prices on the continent, the weight of the silver coins was reduced again. Pennies were minted at the London and Durham mints. With the reformation starting in the 1530s, the principal effect as far as the coinage was concerned was the closure of the ecclesiastical mints of Canterbury and York — in future all mints would be Royal mints, under the control of the crown who would get all the revenue; the second coinage, of 1526–1544 had a different inscription, H.
D. G. ROSA SIE SPIA — Henry by the grace of God a rose without a thorn. At this time the pound standard for mintage was changed from the local Tower pound to the internationally known troy pound; the coins were minted at London, the Canterbury and York ecclesiastical mints. The Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s and the ratification of the First Act of Supremacy in 1534 resulted in a huge financial bonus for the king, but by 1544 Henry was running short of money, thanks to his own extravagant lifestyle and expenditure. Henry's solution was to drastically lower the fineness of the third coinage to only one-third silver and two-thirds copper; this was understandably not popular with the people, it resulted in Henry acquiring the nickname "Old Coppernose" as the silver rubbed off the high-relief part of the coin design. By this time there were two mints in London, at the Tower and in Southwark, both of them, together with mints in Bristol and York produced the debased coinage which bore the inscription H.
D. G. ROSA SINE SPINA; the debased coinage caused rampant inflation, so when Henry died in 1547 he left behind a country with a sickly nine-year-old king, religious turmoil, economic unrest. Moreover, the influx of silver and gold from Central and South America into Spain and thus to the rest of Europe was destabilising the price of bullion and making the situation worse; until 1551, what is known as the posthumous coinage was produced — these were coins which were the same as Henry's last issue, but with a different portrait of him. Inflation over the last thirty years had made the penny much less important, in fact for the next few reigns the most common coins would be shillings and groats; the reign of Edward VI though short was numismatically important for seeing the introduction of new denominations — the silver crown, half crown, shilling and Threepence — which were to survive until 1971, which were a reflection of the increasing wealth of the country. The new coins were struck with the aim of revitalising the economy.
Edward VI's pennies however, were still struck in debased metal at the Tower, Southwark and York, with the inscription E. D. G. ROSA SINE SPINA — Edward by the grace of God a rose without a thorn. In 1553 Edward died and was succeeded — after the nine-day rule of Lady Jane Grey — by his older sister, the Catholic Queen Mary. Pennies of her first year, bearing her head alone with the inscription M. D. G. ROSA SINE SPINA — Mary by the grace of God a rose without a thorn — are quite rare. In 1554 she married Philip, the Prince of Spain, put his portrait on the coinage as well as her own. Both fine silver and base metal pennies of this reign were issued from the Tower mint, with the legend P Z M D G ROSA SINE SPINA — Philip and Mary by the grace of God a rose without a thorn; when Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558, England was an impoverished country, in religious turmoil, with a coinage, in a poor state after Henry VIII's debasement, since when little had been done to improve either the quantity or quality of the coins in circulation.
The coinage system as a whole urgently needed reform, Elizabeth boldly set about doing this. Throughout her reign large quantities of gold and silver coins of many denominations were pro
Great Exhibition
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations or The Great Exhibition, an international exhibition, took place in Hyde Park, from 1 May to 15 October 1851. It was the first in a series of World's Fairs, exhibitions of culture and industry that became popular in the 19th century, it was a much anticipated event; the Great Exhibition was organized by Henry Cole and by Prince Albert, husband of the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria. Famous people of the time attended, including Charles Darwin, Samuel Colt, members of the Orléanist Royal Family and the writers Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson and William Makepeace Thackeray; the Exposition des produits de l'industrie française organized in Paris, from 1798 to 1849 were precursors to the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations was organized by Prince Albert, Henry Cole, Francis Henry, George Wallis, Charles Dilke and other members of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Commerce as a celebration of modern industrial technology and design.
It was arguably a response to the effective French Industrial Exposition of 1844: indeed, its prime motive was for Britain to make "clear to the world its role as industrial leader". Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, was an enthusiastic promoter of the self-financing exhibition. Queen Victoria and her family visited three times. Although the Great Exhibition was a platform on which countries from around the world could display their achievements, Britain sought to prove its own superiority; the British exhibits at the Great Exhibition "held the lead in every field where strength, durability and quality were concerned, whether in iron and steel, machinery or textiles." Britain sought to provide the world with the hope of a better future. Europe had just struggled through "two difficult decades of political and social upheaval," and now Britain hoped to show that technology its own, was the key to a better future. Sophie Forgan says of the Exhibition that "Large, piled-up ‘trophy’ exhibits in the central avenue revealed the organisers’ priorities.
Technology and moving machinery were popular working exhibits." She notes that visitors "could watch the entire process of cotton production from spinning to finished cloth. Scientific instruments were found in class X, included electric telegraphs, air pumps and barometers, as well as musical and surgical instruments."A special building, nicknamed The Crystal Palace, or "The Great Shalimar", was built to house the show. It was designed by Joseph Paxton with support from structural engineer Charles Fox, the committee overseeing its construction including Isambard Kingdom Brunel, went from its organisation to the grand opening in just nine months; the building was architecturally adventurous, drawing on Paxton's experience designing greenhouses for the sixth Duke of Devonshire. It took the form of a massive glass house, 1848 feet long by 454 feet wide and was constructed from cast iron-frame components and glass made exclusively in Birmingham and Smethwick. From the interior, the building's large size was emphasized with statues.
The Crystal Palace was an enormous success, considered an architectural marvel, but an engineering triumph that showed the importance of the Exhibition itself. The building was moved and re-erected in 1854 in enlarged form at Sydenham Hill in south London, an area, renamed Crystal Palace, it was destroyed by fire on 30 November 1936. Six million people—equivalent to a third of the entire population of Britain at the time—visited the Great Exhibition; the average daily attendance was 42,831 with a peak attendance of 109,915 on 7 October. The event made a surplus of £186,000, used to found the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum, they were all built in the area to the south of the exhibition, nicknamed Albertopolis, alongside the Imperial Institute. The remaining surplus was used to set up an educational trust to provide grants and scholarships for industrial research; the Exhibition caused controversy. Some conservatives feared that the mass of visitors might become a revolutionary mob, whilst radicals such as Karl Marx saw the exhibition as an emblem of a capitalist fetishism of commodities.
King Ernest Augustus I of Hanover, shortly before his death, wrote to Lord Strangford about it: The folly and absurdity of the Queen in allowing this trumpery must strike every sensible and well-thinking mind, I am astonished the ministers themselves do not insist on her at least going to Osborne during the Exhibition, as no human being can answer for what may occur on the occasion. The idea... must shock every well-meaning Englishman. But it seems. In modern times, the Great Exhibition is a symbol of the Victorian Age, its thick catalogue, illustrated with steel engravings, is a primary source for High Victorian design. A memorial to the exhibition, crowned with a statue of Prince Albert, is locate
Shilling (British coin)
The shilling was a coin worth one twentieth of a pound sterling, or twelve pence. It was first minted in the reign of Henry VII as the testoon, became known as the shilling from the Old English scilling, sometime in the mid-sixteenth century, circulating until 1990; the word bob was sometimes used for a monetary value of several shillings, e.g. "ten bob note". Following decimalisation on 15 February 1971 the coin had a value of five new pence, it was made from silver from its introduction in or around 1503 until 1947, thereafter in cupronickel. Prior to Decimal Day in 1971 there were 240 pence in one pound sterling. Twelve pence made a shilling, twenty shillings made a pound. Values less than a pound were written in terms of shillings and pence, e.g. forty-two pence would be three shillings and six pence, pronounced "three and six". Values of less than a shilling were written in terms of pence, e.g. eight pence would be 8d. Although the coin was not minted until the sixteenth century, the value of a shilling had been used for accounting purposes since the Anglo-Saxon period.
A shilling was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent, or a sheep elsewhere. The value of one shilling equalling 12d was set by the Normans following the conquest; the first coins of the pound sterling with the value of 12d were minted in 1503 or 1504 and were known as testoons. The testoon was one of the first English coins to bear a real portrait of the monarch on its obverse, it is for this reason that it obtained its name from an Italian coin known as the testone, or headpiece, introduced in Milan in 1474. Between 1544 and 1551 the coinage was debased by the governments of Henry VIII and Edward VI in an attempt to generate more money to fund foreign wars; this debasement meant that coins produced in 1551 had one-fifth of the silver content of those minted in 1544, the value of new testoons fell from 12d to 6d. The reason the testoon decreased in value is that unlike today, the value of coins was determined by the market price of the metal contained within them; this debasement was recognised as a mistake, during Elizabeth's reign newly minted coins, including the testoon, had a much higher silver content and regained their pre-debasement value.
Shillings were minted during the reign of every British monarch following Edward VI, as well as during the Commonwealth, with a vast number of variations and alterations appearing over the years. The Royal Mint undertook a massive recoinage programme in 1816, with large quantities of gold and silver coin being minted. Previous issues of silver coinage had been irregular, the last issue, minted in 1787, was not intended for issue to the public, but as Christmas gifts to the Bank of England's customers. New silver coinage was to be of.925 standard, with silver coins to be minted at 66 shillings to the troy pound. Hence, newly minted shillings weighed 5.655 grams. The Royal Mint debased the silver coinage in 1920 from 92.5% silver to 50% silver. Shillings of both alloys were minted that year; this debasement was done because of the rising price of silver around the world, followed the global trend of the elimination, or the reducing in purity, of the silver in coinage. The minting of silver coinage of the pound sterling ceased in 1946 for similar reasons, exacerbated by the costs of the Second World War.
New "silver" coinage was instead minted in cupronickel, an alloy of copper and nickel containing no silver at all. Beginning with Lord Wrottesley's proposals in the 1820s there were various attempts to decimalise the pound sterling over the next century and a half; these attempts came to nothing significant until the 1960s when the need for a currency more suited to simple monetary calculations became pressing. The decision to decimalise was announced in 1966, with the pound to be redivided into 100, rather than 240, pence. Decimal Day was set for 15 February 1971, a whole range of new coins were introduced. Shillings continued to be legal tender with a value of 5 new pence until 31 December 1990. Testoons issued during the reign of Henry VII feature a right-facing portrait of the king on the obverse. Surrounding the portrait is the inscription HENRICUS DI GRA REX ANGL Z FRA, or similar, meaning "Henry, by the Grace of God, King of England and France". All shillings minted under subsequent kings and queens bear a similar inscription on the obverse identifying the monarch, with the portrait flipping left-facing to right-facing or vice versa between monarchs.
The reverse features the escutcheon of the Royal Arms of England, surrounded by the inscription POSVI DEVM ADIVTORE MEVM, or a variant, meaning "I have made God my helper". Henry VIII testoons have a different reverse design, featuring a crowned Tudor rose, but those of Edward VI return to the Royal Arms design used previously. Starting with Edward VI the coins feature the denomination XII printed next to the portrait of the king. Elizabeth I and Mary I shillings are exceptions to this; some shillings issued during Mary's reign bear the date of minting, printed above the dual portraits of Mary and Philip. Early shillings of James I feature the alternative reverse inscription EXURGAT DEUS DISSIPENTUR INIMICI, meaning "Let God arise and His enemies be scattered", becoming QVAE DEVS CONIVNXIT NEMO SEPARET, meaning "What God hath put together let no man put asunder" after 1604. A slang name for a shilling was a "bob" (plural as singular, as
Peter the Great
Peter the Great, Peter I or Peter Alexeyevich ruled the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire from 7 May 1682 until his death in 1725, jointly ruling before 1696 with his elder half-brother, Ivan V. Through a number of successful wars, he expanded the Tsardom into a much larger empire that became a major European power and laid the groundwork for the Russian navy after capturing ports at Azov and the Baltic Sea, he led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific and based on the Enlightenment. Peter's reforms made a lasting impact on Russia, many institutions of Russian government trace their origins to his reign, he is known for founding and developing the city of Saint Petersburg, which remained the capital of Russia until 1917. The imperial title of Peter the Great was the following: By the grace of God, the most excellent and great sovereign prince Pyotr Alekseevich the ruler of all the Russias: of Moscow, of Kiev, of Vladimir, of Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan and Tsar of Siberia, sovereign of Pskov, great prince of Smolensk, Yugorsk, Vyatsky and others, sovereign and great prince of Novgorod Nizovsky lands, Chernigovsky, of Ryazan, of Rostov, Belozersky, Udorsky and the sovereign of all the northern lands, the sovereign of the Iverian lands, of the Kartlian and Georgian Kings, of the Kabardin lands, of the Circassian and Mountain princes and many other states and lands western and eastern here and there and the successor and sovereign and ruler.
Named after the apostle, described as a newborn as "with good health, his mother's black, vaguely Tatar eyes, a tuft of auburn hair", from an early age Peter's education was put in the hands of several tutors, most notably Nikita Zotov, Patrick Gordon, Paul Menesius. On 29 January 1676, Tsar Alexis died, leaving the sovereignty to Peter's elder half-brother, the weak and sickly Feodor III of Russia. Throughout this period, the government was run by Artamon Matveev, an enlightened friend of Alexis, the political head of the Naryshkin family and one of Peter's greatest childhood benefactors; this position changed when Feodor died in 1682. As Feodor did not leave any children, a dispute arose between the Miloslavsky family and Naryshkin family over who should inherit the throne. Peter's other half-brother, Ivan V of Russia, was next in line for the throne, but he was chronically ill and of infirm mind; the Boyar Duma chose the 10-year-old Peter to become Tsar with his mother as regent. This arrangement was brought before the people of Moscow, as ancient tradition demanded, was ratified.
Sophia Alekseyevna, one of Alexis' daughters from his first marriage, led a rebellion of the Streltsy in April–May 1682. In the subsequent conflict some of Peter's relatives and friends were murdered, including Matveev, Peter witnessed some of these acts of political violence; the Streltsy made it possible for Sophia, the Miloslavskys and their allies to insist that Peter and Ivan be proclaimed joint Tsars, with Ivan being acclaimed as the senior. Sophia exercised all power. For seven years, she ruled as an autocrat. A large hole was cut in the back of the dual-seated throne used by Peter. Sophia would sit behind the throne and listen as Peter conversed with nobles, while feeding him information and giving him responses to questions and problems; this throne can be seen in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow. Peter was not concerned that others ruled in his name, he engaged in such pastimes as sailing, as well as mock battles with his toy army. Peter's mother sought to force him to adopt a more conventional approach and arranged his marriage to Eudoxia Lopukhina in 1689.
The marriage was a failure, ten years Peter forced his wife to become a nun and thus freed himself from the union. By the summer of 1689, Peter age 17, planned to take power from his half-sister Sophia, whose position had been weakened by two unsuccessful Crimean campaigns against the Crimean Khanate in an attempt to stop devastating Crimean Tatar raids into Russia's southern lands; when she learned of his designs, Sophia conspired with the leaders of the Streltsy, who continually aroused disorder and dissent. Peter, warned by the Streltsy, escaped in the middle of the night to the impenetrable monastery of Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra. Sophia was overthrown, with Peter I and Ivan V continuing to act as co-tsars. Foy de la Neuville records that Sophia requested influential members of Peter's family, notably her aunts Tatyana and Anna, to mediate with him. Peter forced Sophia to enter a convent, where she gave up her name and her position as a member of the royal family. Still, Peter could not acquire actual control over Russian affairs.
Power was instead exercised by Natalya Naryshkina. It was only. Formally, Ivan V remained a co-ruler with Peter. Peter became the sole ruler when Ivan died in 1696. Peter was 24 years old. Peter grew to be tall as an a
Pound sterling
The pound sterling known as the pound and less referred to as sterling, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the British Antarctic Territory, Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence. A number of nations that do not use sterling have currencies called the pound. Sterling is the third most-traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the United States dollar, the euro. Together with those two currencies and the Chinese yuan, it forms the basket of currencies which calculate the value of IMF special drawing rights. Sterling is the third most-held reserve currency in global reserves; the British Crown dependencies of Guernsey and the Isle of Man produce their own local issues of sterling which are considered equivalent to UK sterling in their respective regions. The pound sterling is used in Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, Saint Helena and Ascension Island in Saint Helena and Tristan da Cunha; the Bank of England is the central bank for the pound sterling, issuing its own coins and banknotes, regulating issuance of banknotes by private banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Banknotes issued by other jurisdictions are not regulated by the Bank of England. The full official name pound sterling, is used in formal contexts and when it is necessary to distinguish the United Kingdom currency from other currencies with the same name. Otherwise the term pound is used; the currency name is sometimes abbreviated to just sterling in the wholesale financial markets, but not when referring to specific amounts. The abbreviations "ster." and "stg." are sometimes used. The term "British pound" is sometimes incorrectly used in less formal contexts, it is not an official name of the currency; the exchange rate of the pound sterling against the US dollar is referred to as "cable" in the wholesale foreign exchange markets. The origins of this term are attributed to the fact that in the 1800s, the GBP/USD exchange rate was transmitted via transatlantic cable. Forex traders of GBP/USD are sometimes referred to as "cable dealers". GBP/USD is now the only currency pair with its own name in the foreign exchange markets, after IEP/USD, known as "wire" in the forward FX markets, no longer exists after the Irish Pound was replaced by the euro in 1999.
There is apparent convergence of opinion regarding the origin of the term "pound sterling", toward its derivation from the name of a small Norman silver coin, away from its association with Easterlings or other etymologies. Hence, the Oxford English Dictionary state that the "most plausible" etymology is derivation from the Old English steorra for "star" with the added diminutive suffix "-ling", to mean "little star" and to refer to a silver penny of the English Normans; as another established source notes, the compound expression was derived: However, the perceived narrow window of the issuance of this coin, the fact that coin designs changed in the period in question, led Philip Grierson to reject this in favour of a more complex theory. Another argument that the Hanseatic League was the origin for both the origin of its definition and manufacture, in its name is that the German name for the Baltic is "Ost See", or "East Sea", from this the Baltic merchants were called "Osterlings", or "Easterlings".
In 1260, Henry III granted them a charter of protection and land for their Kontor, the Steelyard of London, which by the 1340s was called "Easterlings Hall", or Esterlingeshalle. Because the League's money was not debased like that of England, English traders stipulated to be paid in pounds of the "Easterlings", contracted to "'sterling". For further discussion of the etymology of "sterling", see sterling silver; the currency sign for the pound is £, written with a single cross-bar, though a version with a double cross-bar is sometimes seen. This symbol derives from medieval Latin documents; the ISO 4217 currency code is GBP, formed from "GB", the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for the United Kingdom, the first letter of "pound". It does not stand for "Great Britain Pound" or "Great British Pound"; the abbreviation "UKP" is used but this is non-standard because the ISO 3166 country code for the United Kingdom is GB. The Crown dependencies use their own codes: GGP, JEP and IMP. Stocks are traded in pence, so traders may refer to pence sterling, GBX, when listing stock prices.
A common slang term for the pound sterling or pound is quid, singular and plural, except in the common phrase "quids in!". The term may have come via Italian immigrants from "scudo", the name for a number of coins used in Italy until the 19th century.
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope was an English novelist of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which revolves around the imaginary county of Barsetshire, he wrote novels on political and gender issues, other topical matters. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he had regained the esteem of critics by the mid-20th century. Thomas Anthony Trollope, Anthony's father, was a barrister. Though a clever and well-educated man and a Fellow of New College, Oxford, he failed at the Bar due to his bad temper. In addition, his ventures into farming proved unprofitable, he lost an expected inheritance when an elderly childless uncle remarried and had children. Thomas Trollope was son of Rev. Anthony Trollope, rector of Cottered, himself the sixth son of Sir Thomas Trollope, 4th Baronet; the baronetcy came to descendants of Anthony Trollope's second son, Frederick. As a son of landed gentry, Thomas Trollope wanted his sons to be raised as gentlemen and to attend Oxford or Cambridge.
Anthony Trollope suffered much misery in his boyhood owing to the disparity between the privileged background of his parents and their comparatively small means. Born in London, Anthony attended Harrow School as a free day pupil for three years from the age of seven because his father's farm, acquired for that reason, lay in that neighbourhood. After a spell at a private school at Sunbury, he followed his father and two older brothers to Winchester College, where he remained for three years, he returned to Harrow as a day-boy to reduce the cost of his education. Trollope had some miserable experiences at these two public schools, they ranked as two of the most élite schools in England, but Trollope had no money and no friends, was bullied a great deal. At the age of twelve, he fantasised about suicide. However, he daydreamed, constructing elaborate imaginary worlds. In 1827, his mother Frances Trollope moved to America with Trollope's three younger siblings, to Nashoba Commune. After that failed, she opened a bazaar in Cincinnati.
Thomas Trollope joined them for a short time before returning to the farm at Harrow, but Anthony stayed in England throughout. His mother returned in 1831 and made a name for herself as a writer, soon earning a good income, his father's affairs, went from bad to worse. He gave up his legal practice and failed to make enough income from farming to pay rents to his landlord, Lord Northwick. In 1834, he fled to Belgium to avoid arrest for debt; the whole family moved to a house near Bruges, where they lived on Frances's earnings. In Belgium, Anthony was offered a commission in an Austrian cavalry regiment. To accept it, he needed to learn German. To learn them without expense to himself and his family, he took a position as an usher in a school in Brussels, which position made him the tutor of thirty boys. After six weeks of this, however, he received an offer of a clerkship in the General Post Office, obtained through a family friend, he returned to London in the autumn of 1834 to take up this post.
Thomas Trollope died the following year. According to Trollope, "the first seven years of my official life were neither creditable to myself nor useful to the public service." At the Post Office, he acquired a reputation for insubordination. A debt of £12 to a tailor fell into the hands of a moneylender and grew to over £200. Trollope hated his work, but lived in constant fear of dismissal. In 1841, an opportunity to escape offered itself. A postal surveyor's clerk in central Ireland was reported as being incompetent and in need of replacement; the position was not regarded as a desirable one at all. Trollope based himself in Banagher, King's County, with his work consisting of inspection tours in Connaught. Although he had arrived with a bad reference from London, his new supervisor resolved to judge him on his merits, his salary and travel allowance went much further in Ireland than they had in London, he found himself enjoying a measure of prosperity. He took up fox hunting, his professional role as a post-office surveyor brought him into contact with Irish people, he found them pleasant company: "The Irish people did not murder me, nor did they break my head.
I soon found them to be good-humoured, clever—the working classes much more intelligent than those of England—economical and hospitable."At the watering place of Kingstown, Trollope met Rose Heseltine, the daughter of a Rotherham bank manager. They became engaged, their first son, Henry Merivale, was born in 1846, the second, Frederick James Anthony, in 1847. Soon after their marriage, Trollope transferred to another postal district in the south of Ireland, the family moved to Clonmel. Though Trollope had decided to become a novelist, he had accomplished little writing during his first three years in Ireland. At the time of his marriage, he had only written the first of three volumes of his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran. Within a year of his marriage, he finished that work. Trollope began writ
Metrication
Metrication or metrification is conversion to the metric system of units of measurement. Worldwide, there has been a long process of independent conversions of countries from various local and traditional systems, beginning in France during the 1790s and spreading over the following two centuries, but the metric system has not been adopted in all countries and sectors. Whilst most countries in the world are using the metric system as their official system of weights and measures, some countries have not committed to adopting it, or have adopted it as their official system but have not completed the process of full metrication. Most countries have adopted the metric system over a transitional period where both units are used for a set period of time; some countries such as Guyana, for example, have adopted the metric system, but have had some trouble over time implementing it. Antigua and Barbuda "officially" metric, is moving toward total implementation of the metric system, but slower than expected.
The government had announced that they have plans to convert their country to the metric system by the first quarter of 2015. Other Caribbean countries such as Saint Lucia are metric but are still in the process toward full conversion. In the United Kingdom the metric system is the official system for most regulated trading by weight or measure purposes, but some imperial units remain the primary official unit of measurement; as of 2018 the UK has only metricated. According to the US Central Intelligence Agency's online The World Factbook, the metric system has not been adopted by Myanmar and the US; the United States use US customary units as does Liberia. Myanmar uses the Burmese units of measurement. According to The Observer, Liberia are committed to adopting the metric system in the future; some sources now identify Liberia as metric, the government of Myanmar has stated that the country would metricate with a goal of completion by 2019. Both Myanmar and Liberia are metric countries, trading internationally in metric units.
Sierra Leone switched to selling fuel by the litre in May 2011. The European Union used the Units of Measure Directive to attempt to achieve a common system of weights and measures and to facilitate the European Single Market. Throughout the 1990s, the European Commission helped accelerate the process for member countries to complete their metric conversion processes. Among them is the United Kingdom where laws in some or all contexts mandate or permit many imperial measures, such as miles and yards for road-sign distances, road speed limits in miles per hour, pints of beer, inches for clothes; the United Kingdom secured permanent exemptions for the mile and yard in road markings, for the pint of draught beer sold in pubs. In 2007, the European Commission announced that it was to abandon the requirement for metric-only labelling on packaged goods, to allow dual metric–imperial marking to continue indefinitely; the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada have some active opposition to metrication where updated weights and measures laws would make obsolete historic systems of measurement.
Other countries, like France and Japan, that once had significant popular opposition to metrication now have complete acceptance of metrication. The Roman empire used the pes measure; this was divided into 12 unciae. The libra was another measure that had wide effect on European weight and currency long after Roman times, e.g. lb, £. The measure came to vary over time. Charlemagne was one of several rulers who launched reform programmes of various kinds to standardise units for measure and currency in his empire, but there was no real general breakthrough. In medieval Europe, local laws on weights and measures were set by trade guilds on a city-by-city basis. For example, the ell or elle was a unit of length used in Europe, but its length varied from 40.2 centimetres in one part of Germany to 70 centimetres in The Netherlands and 94.5 centimetres in Edinburgh. A survey of Switzerland in 1838 revealed that the foot had 37 different regional variations, the ell had 68, there were 83 different measures for dry grain, 70 measures for fluids and 63 different measures for "dead weights".
When Isaac Newton wrote Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687, he quoted his measurements in Parisian feet so readers could understand the size. Examples of efforts to have local intercity or national standards for measurements include the Scottish law of 1641, the British standard imperial system of 1824, still used in the United Kingdom. At one time Imperial China had standardised units for volume throughout its territory, but by 1936 official investigations uncovered 53 values for the chi varying from 200 millimetres to 1250 millimetres. However, revolutionary France was to produce the definitive International System of Units which has come to be used by most of the world today; the desire for a single international system of measurement came from growing international trade and the need to apply common standards to goods. For a company to buy a product produced in another country, they need to ensure that the product would arrive as described; the medieval ell was abandoned in part.
One primary advantage of the International Sy
