500 guineas
How much would the 500 guineas from the era of Barry Lyndon be equivalent of in modern $USD?
Was it 500 annual or monthly?
I think a Guinea was 1/4 of an ounch of gold.So 500 would be 125 ounches.With the current price of gold,it would be equal to 125000 euro a year.
shareOn that basis, at 4 guineas to one ounce of gold, Barry, before he was sent packing in a legless condition, back when he was still 'Barry Lyndon Esq', still with 'an Estate and 30,000 guineas a year', he would have been making 7,500 ounces of gold, crudely equivalent today to about 8 million US dollars or 7.5 million euros or 5.5 million pounds sterling. That should keep highwayman Captain Feeney in pocket money for quite a while should he ever encounter Barry once again.
shareCpt.Feeney stole 20 guineas if I remember correctly.About 5000 euro.Not bad for an easy days work
share20 guineas and a horse, so he could stay ahead of what he called his clients. Barry will later, like Feeney, also steal a horse, along with a uniform and fake identity, as if to resume his former journey as a 'gentleman', only to be interrupted, unstaged, by a Captain Potzdorf on another horse. The oneupmanhorse version of oneupmanship
And Barry will later pay 80 guineas for another horse, with tragic and fatal consequences for his son. Years before, Barry's father too had lost his life in a duel, not with a horse, but about a horse.
Someone is obsessed with horses, as a matter of life and death. Redrum, Redrum, Redrum!
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Barry later returns to Ireland, finds peace in religion, converts to the priesthood, and takes to composing assorted ballads and popular songs, all of them called "My Lovely Horse". This is just one of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzYzVMcgWhg