With Lumbardes letters
I ladde gold to Rome,
And took it by tale there.
In the York Pageant of 1415 we find two separate detachments of these water-leaders in procession, one in conjunction with the bakers, the other with the cooks. It would be doubtless these two classes of shopkeepers their duties of carrying stores, especially flour, to and from the different vessels would bring them in contact with most. Our ‘Leaders,’ ‘Leeders,’ ‘Leders,’ and ‘Loders’ are either the more general carrier or an abbreviated form of the above.[[430]] ‘Gager,’ though rarely met with now, is a descendant of ‘William le Gageour,’ or ‘Alexander le Gauger,’ or ‘Henry le Gaugeour,’ of many a mediæval record. His office was to attend to the King’s revenue at our seaports, and though not strictly so confined, yet his duties were all but entirely concerned in the measurement of liquids, such as oil, wine, honey.[[431]] The tun, the pipe, the tierce, the puncheon, casks and barrels of a specified size—these came under his immediate supervision, and the royal fee was accordingly. Such a name as ‘Josceus le Peisur,’ now found as ‘Poyser’ or ‘Henry le Waiur,’ that is, ‘Weigher,’[[432]] met with now also in the form of ‘Weightman,’ represented the passage of more solid merchandise. The old form of ‘poise’ was ‘peise.’ Piers Plowman makes Covetousness to confess—
I lerned among Lumbardes
And Jewes a lesson,
To weye pens with a peis,
And pare the heaviest.
Richard in ‘Richard the III.’ finely says—
I’ll strive, with troubled thoughts, to take a nap,