FIG. 58.—A PINT MEASURE OF THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH.
FIG. 59.—A WINCHESTER PINT OF THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE.
FIG 60.—OLD FRENCH WEIGHTS.
(In the British Museum.)
In this connection it may be pointed out that a very pleasing collection can inexpensively be made out of old money changers' weights, both English and foreign. They were chiefly used with the pocket scales at one time carried about by traders as a precaution against the numerous clipped and light-weight coins in circulation. Among these little weights are those which were used for testing what are now obsolete gold coins, such as angel, guinea, half-guinea, and seven-shilling piece.
Some of the old Roman bell weights are interesting; they took their shape from more ancient weights in the form of a pagan deity, probably Mercury, who was looked upon as a god of scales and weights. In some collections larger Continental weights are met with; those illustrated in Fig. 60 representing three French weights preserved in the British Museum.
When examining old weights and measures we often wonder at the origin of such curious tables of weight formulated on somewhat perplexing standards, ridiculed as long obsolete by supporters of the metric systems. They would sweep them away; but to do so would snap one more link with the historic past, and perhaps cause us to forget the very simple origin of so many of our so-called complicated systems, the outcome of a slowly developing commerce—very different now to the days when our standards were formulated. The baseline of our weights and measures is to be found in a single grain of corn, such as would seem to be Nature's gift—the staff of life! It was a natural standard for agriculturists, who would be the first to use it, to adopt. Not only was the grain of corn the standard of measurement and weight, but a given number gave the weight value to the penny sterling. The grain retained its prominent position in our calculations long after standards had been fixed, for in the reign of Henry VII it was enacted that the bushel measure should contain eight gallons of wheat, and that the gallon should weigh eight pounds, the pound to be of twelve ounces Troy, each ounce equal to twenty silver pennies, every one of which should be of weight equivalent to thirty-two grains of dry wheat.
It will be remembered that a still earlier standard—that of the Roman Empire—was based on barleycorns, of which there were twenty-four to the ounce, a measurement adopted at Troyes, in France, having been brought from Cairo during the Crusades. Thus in this simple story we see the origin of Troy weight which in after years was used concurrently with the later avoirdupois (goods by weight), the standard adopted for heavy wares.