The Quart and Pint
While the wine-pint was an eighth of a wine-gallon the common pint of England was the Ale-pint, an eighth of the Tudor Ale-gallon, which was 280 or 282 cubic inches and differed little from the Imperial gallon = 277·27 cubic inches. So the pint of ale in Tudor times differed little from an Imperial pint.
The Quart and Pint of Elizabeth preserved at the Standards Office are larger than Imperial measure, the Quart holding 40·53 ounces as compared with the 40 ounces of the Imperial quart; it is one-fourth of a gallon of 280 cubic inches, the Tudor ale-gallon.
3. Corn Measure
It has been seen that Henry III’s statute defined the gallon as containing 8 lb. of wine, and Edward I’s as containing 8 lb. of wheat. It is probable that the Magna Charta principle of ‘one weight, one measure’ prevented the mention of two different gallons, as it prevented the mention of two different pounds. But we know that there were two gallons. In England as in ancient Greece the unit of corn-measure was the fluid measure of the Talent increased in water-wheat ratio; so our cubic foot, taken as a wine-bushel of 8 wine-gallons, and increased one-fourth, gave the corn-bushel of 8 corn-gallons.
| 1728/8 c.i. | = | 216 c.i., the original wine-gallon, |
| 1728 c.i. × 1·25 | = | 2160 c.i., the corn-bushel, |
of which 1/8 = 270 c.i. was the corn-gallon.
It has been seen that the wine-gallon increased to 231 c.i., but the corn-standard remained for centuries (excepting a vagary temp. Henry VII and VIII) at very nearly its original value. It must be remembered how difficult it must have been to cast accurately a shallow brass pan 18-1/2 inches in diameter and only 8 inches deep; and this is probably the cause of the slight difference between the two standards of corn-measure, the London bushel and the Winchester bushel. These were simply variants, inevitable in making standard measures of the calculated capacity of the bushel = 2160 cubic inches = 1-1/4 cubic feet.
The London bushel = 2150·42 c.i.; the gallon = 268·8 c.i.
The Winchester bushel = 2178 c.i.; the gallon = 272-1/4 c.i.