Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/59

 io">s.in.jA>-.2i,i905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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pack-saddle. This lesser wey would contain 16 of the lesser stone, the London stone of 8 pounds, a weight so convenient that it survives to this day in the meat trade, and I believe in the Eastern counties for cheese. When Edward III. raised the hundredweight to 112 pounds, he divided it into 4 quarters, and each quarter into 4 units of 7 pounds. Now what name should be given to this weight ? The term " nail " presents itself at once as applicable to the sixteenth of the new hundredweight. And so it was used in this sense. Andrew Halyburton, the merchant trading from the Netherlands, before 1500, uses "nail," plural "nallis,"for the 7 pound weight of wool. How would the scribes of Plantagenet times, ignorant of the human origin of the term " nail," render it in their law Latin and French ] Very naturally they blundered, and rendered it by L. davits and Fr. clou, clone, or, in the script of the time, clove. Apparently these terms "nail" and "clove" took with the people, especially the latter, and so we find the London stone of 8 pounds sometimes called a clove. Quotations under ' Clove' in the ' O.E.D/ show the wey as of 32 cloves, each by statute of 7 pounds, but by custom of 8 pounds.

One quotation (1328) is : " quse quidem trona continet in se quatuor pisas et quatuor clavos," meaning " which Tron balance has in (or with) it 4 ' weighs ' or weys and 4 cloves." Now I came across, in the Guildhall Library, a document of very recent date quoting an order of 1297, in which it is said that the wool tron for the town of Lynne " continet in se quatuor pisas et quatuordecim clavos." This is translated as an auncel weighing machine provided with "4 burden points and 14 pivots or pins." So here the thirteenth-century scribe puts " nail " into Latin as clavus, and " wey " as pisa t and the end - of - the - nineteenth - century antiquary restores clavus as a pin, and pisa as the burden point of a steelyard.

It is interesting to observe how the scribes capped their rendering of "nail" as clavus by translating " weigh " as pisa, I think it probable that both terms were put into French and then into Latin. One clerk would naturally translate " weigh " by jiois, as in aver de pois ; then some bright colleague, perhaps the ingenious inventor of clou and clavus, would put pois into Latin in the leguminous form of pisum, modifying its termination in accordance with the old English pisa, pease.

The story I have attempted to tell shows the trend of the human mind towards three factors of measure : 24, 12, 16 (or 8). The

first gives way to the duodecimal system^ which in its turn gives way, except perhaps for money, to the sexdecimal system, the system which is on the whole best adapted to mental calculation. Agricultural folk, labourers, women, prefer a system enabling them to double and to halve almost indefi- nitely, while offering them resting-places at superior or inferior units with familiar names, as, for instance, in our measures of capacity. Our "nail" system resembles the "anna" system of India, where that term means a sixteenth. It matters little that there is no actual anna coin ; the idea of a sixteenth as a division of the rupee or of any other unit land, a venture, a crop is most convenient to the popular mind. EDWARD NICHOLSON, 1, Huskisson Street, Liverpool.

DISBENCHED JUDGES.

THE following notes are intended as sup-

g'ementary to the articles on Mr. Justice- olloway and Mr. Baron Ingleby in the ' Diet. Nat. Biog.' In printing them I may mention that I have not as yet seen the lately published volume of additions and corrections.

Sir Richard Holloway, "being well in health and of good and disposeing mind and memory, but by reason of his age infirme," made his will at Oxford, on 12 January, "in the eighth yeare of the Reigne of William the third, &c., 1696." The Spartan simplicity of the allusion to the reigning monarch by the sturdy old Jacobite is certainly comical. There were four sons : 1. John (born about 1661, died February, 1720), of St. John's College, Oxford, and of the Inner Temple, barrister - at - law. 2. Richard (born about 1664, died 10 September, 1681), of Christ Church, Oxford, and a student of the Inner Temple (1678). 3. Henry (born about 1667,, died November, 1741), of Christ Church, Oxford, and of the Inner Temple, barrister- at-law. 4. Peter, likewise a lawyer. To his eldest son John Sir Richard gave all his- interest in his lodgings in Serjeants' Inn, in Fleet Street, London, and property "in Hockmore Streete, in the parish of Ifley, in the county of Oxon " (now transferred from Iffley to Cowley). His daughter Elizabeth Holloway was given " the house I live in, being held of Magdalen College, in Oxon, for the Terme of forty Yeares " ; also, " all that meadow of pasture ground called ffryars, or the Grey ffryers, lying in or near the parish of St. Ebbe, in Oxford." Property at Church Cowley and Temple Cowley is likewise named. Holloway died at Oxford in the beginning of