The Plantagenet domination in France caused the stone to pass there,
though not always at English weight; and there being no regular weight
in France between the pound and the quintal, local stones came into use.
‘Les laines vend on par sacs et par pois, par pierres, par claus et par
livres,’ the French terms for the sack, the wey, the stone, the clove
and the pound.[25] Sometimes the stone was called ‘gal’ (stone, _galet_,
shingle) and the clove ‘demi-gal’ (Livre blanc de l’hotel de ville
d’Abbeville). The French stone was of variable weight. One record gives
the sack of wool (= 4 Montpellier light quintals) as of 25 pierres,
which would make them 9 lb. each. Another record gives it as 36 stone of
9 standard pounds (= 10 English pounds).
Footnote 25:
See section on the Nail and the Clove, Chap. XX.
The stone appears to be extinct now in France; I find that as late as
1579 wool was sold in Burgundy by the wool-stone (_la pierre de laine_)
= 12 French or about 13 English pounds.
While the old English wey or load was 16 × 16 = 256 lb., the wey ordered
for wool was half a sack = 182 lb. It would seem that, once the King’s
dues paid, the shipper was free to make up his sacks or sarplers of wool
as most convenient to him. The customary wey or weigh (Sc. waugh or
wall) seems to have been 32 cloves or nails of 7 lb. = 2 cwt. A ‘poke’
of wool ‘weand 4 C. 15 nallis,’ i.e. 4 cwt. and 105 lb. A sack might be
‘6 wall and 25 naill,’ i.e. 12 cwt. and 175 lb.
The wey or weigh became, in statute French, _poids_, _pois_; but the
scribes took the wrong _pois_ and thinking it meant ‘pease’ made it
_pisa_ in their Latin, just as they took the wrong ‘nail’ and made it L.
_clavus_, and in French _clau_, through L. _clavis_, meaning a ‘key.’
_Lead Weight_
While the fother is 17-2/3 cwt. for coal, it is 19-1/2 cwt. = 2184 lb.
for lead. This peculiar unit, also called the char or load, is the
consequence of a statute 31 Edw. I, perhaps the most confused and
bewildering of the many confused medieval statutes on weights and
measures, and one in which subsequent interpolations may be suspected.
It ordered two stones, one of 12 lb. and another of 12-1/2 lb., and to
keep up the pretence of there being no weight other than of Tower
standard, it declared that a pound shall contain 25 shillings. This
shilling standard may be put aside.
The 12 lb. stone is ordered apparently either as a double of a customary
‘lead-pound’ of 6 lb. or to make the customary fotmal or ‘pig’ of lead,
70 lb. weight, ‘contain 6 stones (of 12 lb.) less 2 lb.’ It also says
that the deduction of 2 lb. leaves ‘70 lb. making 5 stones.’ This
passage appears to be a subsequent interpolation after the institution
of Edward III’s 14 lb. stone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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