Further evidence is to be found in 12 Henry VII (1496).
This statute, after the usual preamble about ‘one weight and one measure,’ orders:
That the measure of a Bushel contain 8 gallons of wheat, and that every Gallon contain 8 lb. of wheat of Troy weight, and every Pound contain 12 ounces of Troy weight, and every Ounce contain 20 sterlings and every Sterling be of the weight of 32 Corns of wheat that grew in the midst of the ear of wheat according to the old law of the land.
While the bushel is now described as containing 8 gallons of wheat and each gallon 8 pounds of wheat, the old fiction is kept up that these are royal pounds. Only these pounds are now Troy, of 5760 grains, instead of Tower, of 5400 grains; 64 Troy pounds were equal to 52-2/3 lb. averdepois, a weight still far from the 62-1/2 lb. averdepois of wheat contained in the extant bushel-measure of Henry VII. And though the mints were coining 420, instead of 240, pennies from the 5760 grain-pound of silver, so that these were little more than half the weight of Henry III’s pennies, yet they were still of the weight of 32 wheat-corns.
The substance of this statute was embodied in a State-document adorned with a picture of the King’s Steward presiding over the gauging of bushels and weighing of wheat-corns, surmounted by a picture of two entwined wheat-ears with the inscription:
The Conage of the Mynte.
The whete eare. Two graynes maketh the xvi pte. of a penny, ffower graynes maketh the viij pte. of a penny.
After this impudent assertion one is not surprised to read that it was ‘the same tyme ordeired that xvi uncs of Troie maketh the Haberty poie a pounde for to buy spice[[23]] by,’ nor by the statement that ‘the C is true at this daye, ffyve score for the hundred as appeareth in Magna Carta.’
Comment on these ingenious statements seems hardly necessary.
The only changes in English weights since the time of Henry III, or indeed much earlier times, have been: