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Cooing and Billing

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like Philip and Mary on a shilling. The reference is to coins struck in the year 1555, in which Mary and her consort are placed face to face, and not cheek by jowl, the usual way.

“Still amorous, and fond, and billing,

Like Philip and Mary on a shilling.”

Hudibras, part iii. 1.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.