CHAPTER VI. 



WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 



I COMMENTED at some length in my first volume on general 

 and local weights and measures. Local measures were far 

 more numerous in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than 

 they were in the fifteenth and sixteenth. The gradual subjec- 

 tion of England to a central system of justice and law, the 

 constant efforts of authority, and the obvious convenience of 

 uniformity, go far to account for this identity in the conduct of 

 business transactions. But the fact that most of my notes in 

 the fifteenth century, and nearly all those in the sixteenth, are 

 of purchase and not of sale, will explain the general uniformity 

 of measures in the quantities purchased or sold. The aggregate 

 of information which I have been able to discover, as to the 

 price of wool, accounts for the general uniformity of the 

 measures used for this article; though it is probable, had my 

 information been copious, that the use of a common measure 

 would have been more general, as a resultant of the causes or 

 influences mentioned above. 



The Great Charter had declared that weights and measures 

 should be uniform throughout the realm. This had been re- 

 enacted by the 25, 27, 31 Edward I, by the 34 Edward III, 

 and by the 13 Richard II. A statute of uncertain date had 

 defined the weights and measures of various articles ; and those 

 laws which regulated the assise of bread and ale, the judgment 

 of the pillory on offenders, and the statute of bakers are also 



