Chancellor, Richard, -1556; Europe -- Description and travel; Russia -- Description and travel; Willoughby, Hugh, Sir, -1554
Whensoever you find the prices of your wares rated by the pode, consider
that to be the great weight, and the pound to be small. Also they divide
the small pound into forty-eight parts, and they call the
eight-and-fortieth part a slotnike, by the which slotnike the retailers
sell their wares out of their shops, as goldsmiths, grocers,
silk-sellers, and such other, like as we do use to retail by the ounce.
And as for their great weight, which they call the beasemar, they sell by
pode or ship pound. The pode doth contain of the great weight, forty
pounds; and of the small, eighty. There go ten podes to a ship pound.
Yet you must consider that their great weight is not full with ours; for
I take not their great pound to be full thirteen ounces, but above twelve
I think it be. But for your just proof, weigh six rubbles of Russian
money with our pound weight, and then shall you see what it lacketh; for
six rubbles of Russia is, by the Emperor’s standard, the great pound. So
that I think it the next way to know the just weight as well of the great
pound as of the small.
There is another weight needful to be known, which is the weight of
Wardhouse; for so much as they weigh all their dry fish by weight, which
weight is the basemere as they of Russia do use, notwithstanding there is
another sort in it. The names of those weights are these: the marke
pound, the great pound, the wee and the ship pound. The marke pound is
to be understood as our pound, and their great is twenty-four of their
marke pound; the wee is three great pound; and eight wee is a ship pound.
Now, concerning their measures. As they have two sorts of weights, so
they have also two sorts of measures, wherewith they measure cloth, both
linen and woollen. They call the one an areshine, and the other a locut.
The areshine I take to be as much as the Flanders ell, and their locut
half an English yard. With their areshine they may mete all such sorts
of cloths as cometh into the land, and with the locut all such cloth,
both linen and woollen, as they make themselves. And whereas we used to
give yard and inch, or yard and handfull, they do give nothing but bare
measure.
They have also a measure wherewith they do mete their corn, which they
call a set-forth, and the half of that an osmine. This set-forth I take
to be three bushels of London measure. And as for their drink measure,
they call it a spanne, which is much like a bucket; and of that I never
saw any true rate, but that some was greater than other some. And as for
the measures of Wardhouse, wherewith they mete their cloth, there is no
difference between that and the measure of danske, which in half an
English ell.
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