Whether the Kelts of Ireland had any indigenous weight system or not, we have no direct evidence, although we do know as a fact that when Caesar landed in Kent he found the Britons employing coins of gold and bronze, and bars (or according to some MSS. _rings_) of iron adjusted to a fixed weight. However the earliest Irish documents reveal that people using a system of weights for silver directly borrowed from the older Roman system (although it is likely that they had a native standard for gold). As the _solidus_ and _denarius_ became the chief units of Europe from the time of Constantine the Great (336 A.D.), the Irish probably received their system at an earlier date. 1 _unga_ (_uncia_) = 24 _screapalls_ (_scripula_). 1 _screapall_ = 3 _pingiuns_. 1 _pingiun_ = 8 grains of wheat[236]. When we pass to England, the very word _grain_ which we employ to express our lowest weight unit, would of itself suggest that originally some kind of _grain_ or _seed_ was employed by our forefathers in weighing, but as the grain in use among us is the _grain Troy_, and as we have not yet learned its origin, it will not do to argue vaguely from etymology. But a little enquiry soon brings us to a time when the grain Troy did not as yet form the basis of English weights, and when a far simpler method of fixing the weight of the kings coinage was in vogue. It was ordained by 12 Henry VII. ch. V. “that the bushel is to contain eight gallons of wheat, and every gallon eight pounds of wheat, and every pound twelve ounces of Troy weight, and every ounce twenty sterlings, and every sterling to be of the weight of thirty-two grains of wheat that grew in the midst of the ear of wheat according to the old laws of this land[237].” Going backwards we find that in 1280 (8 Edward I.) the penny was to weigh 24 grains, which by weight then appointed were as much as the former 32 grains of wheat. By the Statute _De Ponderibus_, of uncertain date but put by some in 1265, it was ordained that the penny sterling should weigh 32 grains of wheat, round and dry, and taken from the midst of the ear. Going back a step still further we find that by the Laws of Ethelred, every penny weighed 32 grains of wheat[238], and as the pennies struck by King Alfred weigh 24 grains Troy, we may assume without hesitation that they were struck on the same standard of 32 grains of wheat. Thus from Alfred (871-901) down to Henry VII. (1485-1509), we find the penny fixed by this primitive method, and the actual weight of the coins, as tested by the balance at the present day, affords proof positive of the method.