Most large western European armies between the 14th and the 17th century contain a big contingent of poor people, because they were easy to recruit (and because if you were a male servant, getting a weapon and calling yourself a soldier was a step up in status). The French told stories about English archers, the English told stories about Scots and Welsh, crusaders told stories about Turkomen. So no special pleading why one example to illustrate a trend does not count! In a forum post I can’t provide a lot of examples with footnotes.
There is a website with the data from Peter Spufford’s “Handbook of Medieval Exchange”
The L/s/d currencies in the Archivo Datini di Prato seem to be worth about 1/10 as much as English money (so an Italian soldo is about an English penny in the late 14th century). IIRC, a florin was about 3 shillings English in the late 14th century, and Datini usually reckoned 23 soldi of Provence or 32 soldi imperiali made a florin. The big thing was that other money was being randomly debased, but gold florins and silver English money more or less kept their value (and if you use one and only one L/s/d system, there is no confusion). But then the Tudors come in, and Cortez and Pizarro, and things become pretty hopeless to track for a couple of hundred years.
