Talk:Maundy money

I suspect that "... of All the Britons" is a wrong expansion of the abbreviations, and that it would really come out as "... of All Britain". Kinship is the Celtic approach, but the one prevalent in the UK is geographical. The Archbishops of York and Canterbury are Primates of England and All England respectively, not of the English. And so on. PML.

Possibly. In full I think it's BRITTANNIARUM, but it's 30 years since I did Latin, so I've forgotten my declensions! I have some vague thought that the OMN may imply "all its posessions". -- Arwel 00:33 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Here's a source [1] (http://www.24carat.co.uk/coininscriptions.html) but I don't know how accurate it is. It might be just a pronunciation issue. *grin* - Hephaestos

Sigh! It's a good site - I've only spotted a couple of places where I disagree with them, but for BRITANNIARUM OMNIUM , abbr to BRIT(T) OMN it gives "King of all the Britains", and for BRITANNIARUM REX it gives "King of the Britains". However, if you go near the bottom of the page and click "George V inscriptions" it gives BRITT OMN / BRITANNIARUM OMNIUM as "of all the Britons". You can't win, y'know! -- Arwel 02:00 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

The Latin for Britain is Britannia (or Brittania - the Romans couldn't figure out spell it either!). "Of Britain" is therefore Britanniae (or Brittaniae), "of the Britains" (which is what is being abbreviated here) is Britanniarum (or Brittaniarum), "of all the Britains" unabbreviates to omnium Britanniarum. The abbreviation is obviously not one of a word for Britons. The Latin words for Britons are Brit(t)a(n)ni and Brit(t)ones; therefore "of the Britons" would be Britannorum or Brittonum, neither of which abbreviates to "BRITANNIAR". 82.36.26.229 01:52, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Okay, a weird question: I happened to visit the Tower of London and go through the Crown Jewels exhibit on Maundy Thursday, 1991. In one of the cases was a label for a Maundy Thursday foot-washing basin, and a second placard saying that it was in use, in place of the basin. If the monarch hasn't washed feet in centuries, who uses the basin, and for what? Vicki Rosenzweig

Maybe the Governor of the Tower had dirty feet! Arwel

I'm guessing it was off for maintenance; that's common in museums. Hephaestos

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Until 1820 ordinary silver coinage was used for the Maundy money, but from 1822 special coins were minted in values of 1, 2, 3, and 4 pence.

Now I'm curious.

1. What happened in 1821?
2. I know there used to be a silver 1d in general circulation, was this change related to its discontinuation? (Or is my conception of the timeframe of its discontinuation way way off?)

Hephaestos

It doesn't look like any silver pennies were minted in 1821 (or indeed in most years -- the catalogues list them as being minted in 1800, 1817, 1818, and 1820. I presume they simply gave away old coins that year. From 1822 onwards they were minted exclusively for the Maundy sets. Copper pennies (the cartwheels) were minted in 1797, and lighter ones in 1806, 07 and 08, then no more until 1825. The coinage was in a bit of a mess in those days! A long article on pennies is next on my list of things to do, but probably not until next week -- I need to spend a bit of time at my mothers', what with it being Mothers Day over here this weekend, and her being 81... -- Arwel 02:29 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC)

Who to? How? What for? How much?

Who are the coins given to now? How are they chosen? What do they do with them? Sell them immediately? How much are they worth in the free market?