Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/623

] pair of silk stockings, knit in this country; thereupon; she would never wear any else. A fashion of both ladies and gentlemen of this time was to wear small looking-glasses hanging at their sides or inserted in the fan of ostrich feathers.



The history of the coinage from Henry VII. to the reign of Elizabeth is one of depreciation and adulteration, as it had been in the preceding century. Not till Elizabeth did it begin to return to a sound and honest standard.







Henry VII. made several variations in the money of the realm. He preserved the standard of Edward IV. and Richard III., coining 450 pennies from the pound of silver, or thirty-seven nominal shillings and sixpences. He introduced shillings as actual money, being before only nominal, and used in accounts. These shillings, struck in 1504—called at first large groats, and then testons, from the French "teste," or "tête," a head—bore the profile of the king instead of the full face; a thing unknown since the reign of Stephen, but ever after followed, except by Henry VIII. and Edward VI., who, however, used the profile in their groats. Henry coined also a novel coin—the sovereign, or "double rose noble," worth twenty shillings, and the "rose dial," or half-sovereign. These gold coins are now very rare. On the reverse of his coins he for the first time placed the arms.