A jury sat solemnly in a gilded hall in central London, presided over by a bewigged representative of the crown in flowing black robes, but there were no criminals in the dock.
Britain’s coinage was on trial.
In a ceremony that dates back to the 12th century, the jury filed into the Livery Hall of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths to begin the process of weighing and measuring hundreds of coins to ensure they meet stringent standards set by regulators.
The tradition—known as the Trial of the Pyx—amounts to a very old type of consumer protection designed to safeguard the nation’s coinage from counterfeiting or other forms of debasement.
“It’s a way of making sure that if you’re in the UK, the coins that are in your pocket are real and reliable, that you know what they’re made of, that they are up to the right standards,” said Eleni Bide, the librarian for the Goldsmiths’ Company.
“Making really standardized perfect coins is really important part of preventing forgery.”
Like the many old ceremonies that the UK continues to observe, the annual assessment of coinage is replete with traditions that link modern Britain to its historic roots.
That starts with its name, which comes from the ancient Greek word pyxis, or small box, which was later used in Latin, too.
Coins are collected throughout the year and deposited in so-called Pyx boxes, from which jurors randomly select the coins to be tested.
The coins selected will be weighed, measured, examined for their design and tested for metallic composition over the next three months before the jury reconvenes to give its verdict on whether they meet regulatory standards.
In addition to “a mix of tradition and heritage and a bit of pageantry,” Bide said the 770-year-old tradition still has a serious purpose behind it.
“I think the important thing to remember that actually, the person who is on trial here is the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the UK,” said Bide.
This article and video were provided by The Associated Press.
[Juror inspecting a coin during the Trial of the Pyx, a ceremony that dates to the 12th Century in which coins are weighed in order to make certain they are up to standard]
[Coin being held]
[Trial of the Pyx in progress]
[Juror inspecting a coin]
[Gold coins]
Eleni Bide (interview): “The process that you witnessed today has been largely unchanged, especially since the 1870 Coinage Act, and what you can see there are the jurors, who are all members of the Goldsmiths company, counting the coins that come out of the packets in the Pyx boxes to make sure that they’re the right amount there, that that’s all present and correct, inspecting them, giving them a visual inspection to make sure they look okay but then most importantly, randomly selecting a coin from each packet that will go off for testing. And this is not, this is testing that has to happen in a laboratory, it can’t happen just by looking at them.”
[Juror inspecting a coin]
[Silver coin commemorating Paul McCartney]
[Jurors looking at coins]
[Coins being handled]
Eleni Bide (interview): “It’s a way of making sure that if you’re in the UK, the coins that are in your pocket are real and reliable, that you know what they’re made of, that they are up to the right standards. So they’ll do things like, if you put them in a vending machine, they’ll work in the vending machine because they’re all the same shape and size but also, perhaps most importantly, they’re very difficult to counterfeit. Because the more standardized, the more uniform you can make the coins, that provides a challenge for people who want to fake them. So making really standardized perfect coins is really important part of preventing forgery.”
[Juror holding a coin]
[Coin]
Eleni Bide (interview): “But I think what makes it particularly special is it still has a serious purpose behind it. It’s still relevant, it’s not just there for show, it’s still a proper test. And if something goes wrong, then that creates a problem that needs to be resolved. I think the important thing to remember that actually the person who is on trial here is the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the UK, as they are technically the Master of the Mint. Historically, if they’d been found to have overseen badly produced coins, they would have been financially liable to recompense the Treasury for that, for the money lost because of that. So nowadays I don’t think that would happen, but if anything did go wrong, if a fault was found, it’s unlikely, but it’s possible that if a fault was found, that would be a big prompt to go and make sure that the processes in the Mint were running okay.”
[Coins being taken out from a bag]
[Jurors checking coins]
[Gold coins]
[Boxes]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.