There were relations between Burgundy and England. The former was, up to the fall of its powerful dukes in the sixteenth century, a state enjoying prosperity and independence, while France was mostly in a condition of misery. It had, and retained till quite recently, its system of measures and weights, derived from the southern system at the time when Arles was the capital of the kingdom of Burgundy. It had two toises, one = 7-1/2 French feet, the other, for field measure, = 9-1/2 French feet. Now the first seems to have passed to England, for a time at least, for the _Liber Albus_, 1419, contains an order for the City of London: ‘The Toise of pavement to be 7-1/2 feet in length, and the foot of St. Paul in breadth.’ The English wool-weights, the wey, stone (12 French lb.) and clove, were current in Burgundy and in Southern France. But the royal foot was inconveniently long for popular use, and a practice arose of taking 11 inches of it as a customary foot = 11·7 inches. This reduced foot, coinciding almost exactly with the quarter-Aune, was much used in the districts north of Paris as the _pied de Ponthieu_, or _de Clermont_. The Brasse was a short fathom of 5 pieds = 5 ft. 4 in., probably an adaptation of the Roman pace. A _pas_ (pace), of half a brasse = 32 inches, is used in some districts for land-measurement. _Measures of Distance_ There was no official measure of distance, such as our furlong and mile, between the toise and the league, and the league was very variable (see Chapter III). Acre-lengths, cordes, and other popular measures supplied the want, more or less well. In some districts (also in Mauritius) there were milestones at intervals of 1000 toises, called a mille. In South France the mille was divided into centenié of 100 toises or perhaps local cano. This was probably the length of the sesteirado, the rood, 100 × 4 cano. The corde, a field-measure used before the surveyor’s chain, was of variable length. In Burgundy the league of 3000 toises was divided for roadwork into 50 portées, of 12 cordes; these would thus be 5 toises or 30 feet. But there seems also to have been a corde of 33 feet, perhaps reduced feet, and thus = 30 royal feet, and this, doubled, was used as the rough measure of a ‘cord’ of firewood = 4 × 4 feet, in 4-foot logs. This is the probable origin of our ‘cord-wood’ as applied to stacked logs for fuel. _Land-measures_ The units are the square toise = 4·543 sq. yards, the perche and the arpent, with other units in local usage. There were three different perches officially recognised, and still in common use. 1. _Perche d’ordonnance_ or of the _Eaux et Forêts_ administration, 22 royal feet = 23·466 English feet; the square perch of 484 sq. feet = 13·44 sq. toises = 2 sq. rods.