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Ignorant question: What is a pound in this case? It isn't actually a pound of silver in weight, right? I get really confused with modern British currency and what silver the system was based on in the past, etc.

If I see that something is 20 shillings, does that mean it cost me a pound of silver by weight out of the ground to buy?

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Yes, it's a weight of silver, around this era.

One Troy pound (373g) [of silver] divided into 240 pennies (making a penny about 1.55g). Exactly what a shilling is varies, between 4 and 6 pennies. [ https://regia.org/research/misc/costs.htm ]

The last time that a "pound sterling" actually bought a pound of Sterling silver was 1300. Since then, currency debasement was the name of the game and in the next 300 years the silver content of the currency shrank by a factor of three.

If I recall correctly, the pound is just a unit of account (I think I'm using that right) during the Medieval era. No one is actually carrying around pounds of silver.

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