Equipping your Knight

Knights are rarely interested in the stewardship of their manors, and few would be concerned with ledgers. Most nobles rely on others for that. Knights certainly enjoy the fruits of their peasants’ labor and spend money freely and lavishly. The only thing knights want to know is how much they have to spend.

Two types of coins appear in Pendragon: The librum (pound) and the denarius (penny). Various other historical coins exist, but for simplicity’s sake, we ignore shillings, sovereigns, half-sovereigns, marks, nobles, crowns, half-crowns, florins, thruppence, groats, ha’pennies, and farthings.

Libra (singular librum), abbreviated as £, are gold coins. £1 = 240 d.

Denarii (singular denarius), abbreviated as d, are silver coins. They are about half the size of a modern dime. People often cut or broke them in halves or quarters for small change. 1 d. = £1/240.

Libra (£) is also (and much more commonly) used as a unit of account. It is rare for household knights to see a gold librum. To the extent that cash changes hands at all, it is most often in the form of silver denarii.

One librum is the cost to support a peasant family for a year, including food, equipment, and housing; the annual upkeep of one squire and two horses; a feast for thirty nobles; a feast for a hundred commoners; a simple grave in a noble’s family plot; an ornamental pool; or the annual upkeep for a scholar.

One denarius is a knight’s meal; three crossbow bolts; the cost of a monk to read a letter aloud to an illiterate knight.