These measures are the connecting links between those of old France, through Normandy, and those of England, especially in land-measures. Normandy had a system of measures kept in fair unity by the English dukes of Normandy.
‘Thanks to their firm administration the English system was generally marked by a scientific regularity which, notwithstanding its complication, is in remarkable contrast with the barbarous French system.’[[33]]
For England had already, at the Norman Conquest, a good system in which weight, wine-measure, corn-measure, and linear measure were co-related; albeit this co-relation, under the influence of the royal mint pound, was forgotten for many centuries, and is indeed scarcely known at present.
But Northern France and Normandy had no such co-related system. Southern France had an excellent system, indeed that of Marseilles was perfect; while Paris, taking its measures from the South, destroyed their co-ordination and was careless of their standards.
None of the Paris series had any simple relation. So it was in Normandy, where the systems of North and South were mixed with Teutonic measures.
The original Norman perch, like that of England,
et est la mesure 16 pies la perque,
probably Rhineland feet, but perches of 20, 22 and 24 Paris feet, often of reduced Paris feet, superseded it. The Acre was always 4 Vergées or roods, nearly always of 40 square perches, and divided into quarters.
The charuée, caruée or ploughland was usually 60 Normandy acres, divided into 12 bouvées or oxgangs, each of 5 acres or 20 vergées.
Corn-measure had for principal unit the Bushel, 8 of which made a Quarter, a quarter of a horse-load or, if large, of a cartload. The bushel was, or appeared usually to be, a multiple of the Pot; this led to divergencies according to the number of pots taken; yet it seems probable that the Pot was itself a fraction, an eighth, a tenth, a twelfth, or a sixteenth of some bushel either wine-measure or corn-measure.