To this day the old Stone of 16 lb. or its half, the Clove of 8 lb., still continues in use. The butcher’s and fishmonger’s stone is 8 lb., and cheese is sold, in most parts of England, by the 16 lb. stone, as it was five or six centuries ago. In 1434, by 9 Henry VI, it was ordered that the Wey of cheese should contain 32 cloves, yet we learn from Arnold (1500) that the weight of Suffolk Cheese is xij score and xvj lb., the same weight as the wey (16 × 16 = 256 lb.), and Recorde (1543) says that for butter and cheese ‘a clove containeth 8 lb. and a wey 32 cloves which is 256 lb.’ By 10 Anne (1712) a barrel of soap is to contain 256 lb., i.e. a Wey.

The Plantagenet 14 lb. stone is used for flour and potatoes, &c., but the load, the modern form of the wey, is 18 stone of 14 lb. = 252 lb., evidently an approximately near substitute for the 16 × 16 lb. = 256 lb. of the Wey, there being until quite recently no lawful weights allowed above 7 lb. but in multiples of that weight. The load, like the wey, has the advantage of being equal to 4 bushels of heavy corn at 63 lb., so that it is half of the Quarter and an eighth of the wheat-chaldron or ton-measure.

What was the reason for the Plantagenet Cwt.? for the inconvenient unit, rightly rejected by our brethren in North America, and in several colonies?

Edward I’s intermediate Cwt. of 108 lb. seems to show that it was intended to bring our Cwt. up to that of foreign countries using Troy pounds, 108 lb. being very close to the French and Flemish quintal (Arabic cantar) of 100 Troy lb. The wool-trade with Flanders, the dominion of the Plantagenets in France, may have been the motives for this increase.

The hypothesis that the Cwt. was made 112 lb. so as to be equal to 100 long Troy lb. of 16 Troy ounces, is excluded by the ratio of averdepois to long troy being 100 to 109·7 and also by the new Cwt. dating at least from the time of Edward III, when the royal lb. was still Tower, not Troy, with a ratio to averdepois of 100 to 128; and it was certainly not of 16 ounces.

The only lawful multiples of the Imperial pound were, until quite recently, those of the stone series:

7 lb.. .a clove.
14 lb.. .a stone.
28 lb.. .a quarter-Cwt.
56 lb.. .a half-Cwt.
112 lb.. .a Cwt.
2240 lb.. .a ton.

And the only lawful weights were those of 56, 28, 14, 7, 4, 2, and 1 lb.

I have had some personal experience of the inconvenience of these weights. For years I had to weigh recruits and other soldiers, recording their weights in pounds with this inconvenient set of weights. To get the weight of a man of 152 lb. I had to reckon 2 × 56 lb. + 28 + 7 + 4 + 1 lb. Errors were necessarily frequent when many weighings had to be rapidly done, so I had a set of decimal weights made—20, 10, 5 lb.—and all trouble ceased. But these weights were not lawful, at least for trade purposes.

There was, however, another lawful unit, the Cental, that is, the original English Cwt., brought back to England from North America by the corn-trade. Commerce demanded the recognition of the Cental and got it in 1879.