Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/98

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vn. FEB. 2. 1901.

The only Lady Throgmorton to whom the prisoner could have referred must have been Elizabeth Throgmorton, afterwards the wife of Sir Walter Ralegh, daughter of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, Knt., by Anne, daughter of Sir- Nicholas Carew, Knt. Can any of your readers identify the Shrewsbury prisoner by the above clue? WILLIAM PHILLIPS.

Shrewsbury.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED.

And Judgment at the helm was set, But Judgment was a child as yet, And lack-a-day ! was all unfit

To guide the boat aright. C. C. B.

Cold water is the best of drinks,

The temperance poet sings ; But who am 1 that I should have

The very best of things ? The prince may revel at the pump,

The peer enjoy his tea ; Whisky, or beer, or even wine, Is good enough for me.

C. C. B.

Beneath a portrait of William Cuming, M.D., painted by Thomas Beach, engraved by William bharp :

Rien rechercher, Rien rejetter, Ne se plaindre de Personne.

W. G. BOSWELL-STONE.

TROY WEIGHT FOR BREAD. (9 th S. vi. 468 ; vii. 18.)

THE " Proclamation for Waightes" of 1588, quoted by Q. V., is of great interest, as a sequel to the statute of Henry VIII., 1532 ordering that butcher's meat shall be sold by waight called Haver-du-pois." This was the first statute recognition of it. For more than a thousand years the Roman libra increased to 16 oz., has been the commercial weight of England, the basis of all our measures, yet it was all along ignored by the statute, only obtaining scant recognition as a weight of 15 tower or troy ounces (which it never was). However, in the nineteenth century it gradually acquired statuteauthority and definition, and its rival the troy pound has disappeared, only surviving in the tables ot schoolbooks and almanacs, along with a troy apothecaries' weight which was abolished in 1864. I will now try to answer O. V 's questions seriatim.

1. The reason for bread not being sold by averdepois weight was that from 1266 down to the beginning of the nineteenth century it I mistake not, it was subject to the provisions of 51 Henry III., the Assize of .Bread, which fixed a sliding scale of weight

for bread according to the price of the quarter of wheat, the weight of the farthing loaf being stated in shillings arid pence, 20d. being the equivalence of one ounce tower, and no change being made when tower weight was superseded by the so-called troy weight. This sliding scale, or rather its maximum, was in force in 1617, when complaint was made that bakers could not keep bread up to the assize weight of 17 oz. for the penny loaf (* Liber Albus '). . Now this 17 oz. weight for a penny was the equivalent of the 6s. Wd. (82 dwt. = 4 2 /2oOz. tower weight) fixed in 1266 as the minimum weight of the farthing loaf. As late as 1811 bread appears to have been weighed by a long troy pound of 7,600 grains, the peck loaf being 16 Ib. of this weight=17lb. 6 oz. averdepois (Kelly's ' Universal Cambist '). This long troy pound appears to have been the Amsterdam troy pound = 7,595 grains, which had become the Scottish-Dutch pound, and probably came on from Scotland into England. In 1813 "the Lord Mayor ordered the price of bread to rise half an assize" ('H.E.D.'), that is, half a grade of Henry III.'s sliding scale or some modern amendment of it, for in 1813 the quartern or quarter-peck loaf cost Is. 5d.

2. Troy weight was used in other countries for bread as for other goods, both the old French pound (2 marcs de Troyes) and the Amsterdam pound above mentioned being true troy pounds. But the so-called troy pound of England was not really troy ; it was probably the Amsterdam apothecaries' pound = 5,787 grains.

3. As to when bread became aver de pois, I shall be glad of exact information.* It pro- bably became amenable to the common commercial weight when it ceased to be under Henry III.'s assize statute perhaps about the same time, 1824, that our weights and measures were subjected to judicious reform, and the ancient correlation of weights and of measures of capacity was re-established on a sound basis. EDWARD NICHOLSON.

1, Huskisson Street, Liverpool.

A POEM ATTRIBUTED TO MILTON (9 th S. vi. 182, 238, 292). Ancient writers have bequeathed to us many names with indefinite localities ; ancient place-names existed to which legends became attached, all subject to successive fluctuations. So, when modern map-makers extend Helicon, they obliterate Parnassus; but the writer of the epitaph now under discussion describes a " two-topt mount divine," meaning Parnassus as a whole.

[* See ante, p. 18.]