The latter standard was so called, it is said, because its standard had been kept at Winchester since the time of King Edgar; it was, by 22 Chas. II (1670) and 10 Geo. III (1769), the standard measure for corn and other dry goods.

But by 13 Wm. III (1702) and by 5 Anne (1707) the London bushel was the standard, and this is the present corn-bushel of the United States. It is, however, commonly called, but inaccurately, a Winchester bushel.

4. The Quarter and the Chaldron

When the Cwt. was raised to 112 lb. and the Ton to 2240 lb. the Chaldron or ton-measure of wheat was increased by statute from 4 × 8 = 32 bushels to 36 bushels. One would think it would follow that the Quarter would be raised from 8 to 9 bushels. No, it was not raised, by law at least; so the corn-trade raised it themselves, thinking that evidently if a chaldron is now 36 bushels, for the quarter of it we must ask or give 9 bushels.

But this practice was apparently held to be an offence against the repeated royal declarations beginning with the 32 wheat-corn weight of the penny and ending with the ‘bushel which is the eighth part of the Quarter.’ While one statute raised the Chaldron to 36 bushels, another declared that its quarter was to remain at 8 bushels. In 15 Rich. II (1391) it is declared that ‘8 bushels striked should make the Quarter of corn nevertheless that divers people will not buy but 9 bushels for the Quarter.’

As statutes of 1436 and 1496 repeated this prohibition of any increase of the quarter one may presume that the forbidden practice continued, the increased quarter being called a Vat. But there was another way of evading these statutes; the old story with bad legislation; Fatta la lege, trovato l’inganno. It became in many parts customary to give, not a long-quarter, but a long-bushel of 9 gallons, so that 8 long-bushels would make the new quarter-chaldron. It was possibly a relic of this practice which caused the Chester corn-measure to become 70 lb., roughly 62-1/2 lb. × 9/8 = 70·3 lb. Cheshire perhaps benefited by its neighbourhood to Lancashire, which was specially exempted by 13 Rich. II from the penalties for offences against the unity of weights and measures, ‘because in that county it hath always been used to have greater measure than in any other part of the realm.’[[28]] Yet long-bushels are sometimes the striked equivalents of heaped measure.

But in most parts of the country the attempts to correct stupid legislation were abandoned, and so the Chaldron of 36 bushels fell almost out of use and the Quarter ceased to be a quarter of any measure. In 1707 Bishop Fleetwood (‘Chronicon preciosum’) could only say ‘doubtless a Quarter is a quarter or fourth part of some load or weight.’ And there is a story that Lord Kelvin, asking the head of the Standards Office (giving evidence before a Royal Commission on Weights and Measures) of what a Quarter was the quarter, failed to obtain any light on the subject. And he himself did not know.

But since the corn-trade brought back from North America the old ton of 20 centals, the quarter has found its long-lost father. The freight-ton of ships, 40 cubic feet of cargo, contains 32 bushels (at 1-1/4 cubic feet to the bushel), that is 4 Quarters or 2000 lb. of average wheat = 20 centals.

5. Coal Measure

The Chaldron of 36 bushels is used for the sale of coke and in Northumberland for coal.