STERLING. A term used for the °stand ard') quality of English silver. The British sterling alloy proportion has varied at different times in the course of her history. For a long series of years the standard of silver (sterling) has been 11 ounces and two pennyweights of chemically pure silver alloyed with 18 penny weights of copper; which is 37 parts out of 40 pure silver and three parts of copper, or, as commonly expressed, 222 parts pure silver to 18 parts alloy. As to the derivation of the term sterling this is a long-standing topic for controversy. Numerically, the preponderance of opinion is in favor of the word being derived from the Anglo-Saxon easterling or esterling. Some writers describe the conditions thus: The merchants of the Hanseatic cities and the Netherlands produced a better coinage than the degraded English pieces and King John (early 13th century) called in the services of the coin ers (moneyers), who were known as °easter or men of the East, to use their pro ficiency at the English mint; and the coins so struck were termed esterling or sterling. Cam den (16th century) derives the word from easterling or esterling and observes that the money brought from Germany, in the reign of Richard I (end of 12th century), was the most esteemed on account of its purity, being called in old deeds “nummi easterling.)) A stat ute of Edward I reads: cDenarius Angliae qui vocatur sterlingas," etc. (which translated means "the penny of England, which is called sterling"). Du Cange, in 1733, wrote: "Ester lingus, sterlingus, are words relating to money, and hence familiar to other nations, and applied to the weight, quality, and kind of money."
Documentary evidence informs us that the weight known as sterling was the equivalent of 32 grains of wheat. Pieces coined were double sterling, half sterling and quarter sterling. They were all of silver. The sterling type or face (see NUMISMATICS) consisted of a royal crowned head, some are full face, some are in profile; the reverse is ua large cross impaling the legend and is cantoned with 12 This mintage was copied in Scandinavia, Hol land, Flanders, in northern France, on the Rhine and Westphalia. The English sterling type (face) remained constant for the Bros, penny, half-penny and farthing from Edward I (1272) till Henry VII (1485), and was the national type. In the scale of weights also the pound sterling was standard. After the middle of the 16th century sterling type disappeared from the English coinage which retained the term sterling. The Saxon pound sterling was divided into 20 shillings at 12 pence each, so that there are 20 shillings to one pound sterling. In her colonial financing guineas came into use for a time but have since given way to the pound sterling as standard of coinage. Some writers have considered the derivation of the term coming from star because the coins had a cross carrying four sceptres on its arms and looking like a star. But there are so many sides and direct facts connected with the word sterling that a learned Frenchman, J. Chautard, wrote a large work on the subject without ex hausting the stock of material in hand; it is entitled 'Imitations des Monnaies au Type (Published in Nancy in 1874).