General Question About British Coins

Here's some info about the coins and currency of Scotland.

https://www.livebreathescotland.com...sh-currency/

Cornwall, Wales and Scotland are part of the United Kingdom. Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man are not. They are "crown dependencies", colonies in effect, though they're not called "colonies" because that word is seen as derogatory. Crown Dependencies are self-governing; they have their own parliaments to pass local laws, and laws passed in the British parliament do not apply to them unless the laws specifically state that they do.

Formally, Cornwall and Wales are both part of the Kingdom of England. Scotland is not part of England, but is a separate kingdom within the United Kingdom of Great Britain - which sounds like a paradox, but that's the British for you. The Channel Islands - Guernsey and Jersey - are not part of England either; they are the last remnants of the old Duchy of Normandy, the French territory from whence the current ruling class of England traces their ancestry. The English monarchs lost control of most of Normandy hundreds of years ago, but were able to keep the Channel Islands thanks to English naval supremacy. So if you ask someone from Guernsey or Jersey if they're a "colony of England", they will insist quite firmly that they are not - and rather, that England is their colony and not the other way around, since it was their Duke who conquered England back in 1066. They call Charles III "the Duke", rather than "the king".

The Isle of Man was historically not part of either England, Scotland or Ireland, lying as it does in the Sea between those three nations. It was fought over between England and Scotland for centuries, before the English finally won. Under Scottish rule, a "Lord of Mann" was established, and the English kept this system under their rule. The Lords of Mann were largely autonomous, and had their own parliament. The British government bought out the last hereditary Lord of Mann in 1765 and the British Monarch is now the "Lord of Mann", as well as his other titles.

In short: the quasi-independent, quasi-colonial status of the Crown Dependencies is a historic anachronism, a legacy of the long and peculiar histories of those places, and one that nobody is in any particular hurry to correct.

Sap, thank you for this excellent summary.

Finally, in regard to "separate coinages" for Scotland etc that are part of the United Kingdom, this is expressly forbidden by law, for Scotland at least. Article 16 of the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland states:


Prior to Union, England and Scotland were legally separate countries with separate coinages; the new Union would have a unified coinage for the entire country. The Treaty of Union with Ireland does not mention coinage, but Ireland prior to Union did not have its own separate coinage, so this question did not need to be directly addressed by that treaty. Indeed, some separate Irish crown coinage was struck in the 1820s after that Union was finalized. But overall, while British coinage could (and often did) have "themes" or "designs" evoking one particular part of the country, the coinage system had to remain unified and united.

A point of trivia: you'll note those sentences in the Treaty about the Scottish Mint being retained to strike British coins. This is something of a sore point with the Scots; The Royal Mint kept the Edinburgh mint open for a few years after Union, but then shut it down. The English avoided breaching the Treaty by a sneaky technicality: they kept the "Officers of the Mint" of Scotland on the payroll, so the Scottish Mint theoretically continued to exist on paper - they just had no presses, dies, engravers, coin designers or anything else to actually make coins with. This pretense wasn't abolished until Britain went decimal in 1971.

But if you want a "Scottish coin" in your collection, you've got several options:
- A pre-Union Scottish coin. They exist, and range from cheap to pricey.
- A "Scottish shilling" - between 1937 and 1970, British shillings, came in two different reverse designs, an "English" and a "Scottish" variant.
- A "Scottish pound" - between 1984 and 2017, British pound coins changed design every year, with designs rotating to representing one of the four constituent countries (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) or Britain as a whole.
- Scottish bank notes. Three private banks in Scotland retain permission to issue their own paper money. Bank of England notes can be used as legal tender throughout Britain, but Scottish notes can only be used in Scotland.

I believe that is incorrect. Wales is no longer legally part of England (although it had been for a few centuries); it is now a country in union with the others.

I'd agree with both of those corrections.