Here is an instance of the confusion caused by making bread, like gold, silver and medicines, saleable only by the royal pound. This system of a peculiar pound for bread lasted till the eighteenth century.
Under Edward I the halfpenny loaf weighed 40 s., that is 2 lb. Tower = a little more than 1-1/2 lb. averdepois.
Moneyers and goldsmiths divided the dwt. or original weight of the silver penny, for fine weighing, on the Dutch system, that is into 2 mayles, 4 ferlings 8 troisken, 16 deusken, 32 azen (aces). This would account for the 32 wheat-corns which the silver penny was always supposed to weigh, however many pence the mint struck from the pound of silver.
The mayle and ferling (Fr. _maille_ and _felin_) were the mint-names for the silver halfpenny and farthing.
Under the gradual influence of Troy weight the dwt. Tower was also divided into 24 parts or grains. It was so divided in the time of Edward III.
It must be remembered that there was absolutely no definition of Tower weight, nothing but the usual proclamation about the 32 wheat-corns, a convenient definition, as they still appeared to balance the penny when it had fallen to half its original weight.
The pound of Troie is mentioned in the time of Henry IV, and in the next reign goldsmiths were ordered to use _la libre de Troy_, though by 9 Henry V mint-rates were still stated in _la libre de Tour_. By 2 Henry VI the price of standard silver is fixed at 30_s._ la livre du Troie, which means that 12 × 30 pennies of 15 grains were being coined from a pound of 5400 grains, evidently still a Tower pound. Notwithstanding the change of name, the Troy pound was not proclaimed as the royal pound until 1527, when by 18 Henry VII ‘the pounde Towre shall be no more used, but all manner of golde and sylver shall be wayed by the pounde Troye which excedith the pound Towre in weight 3 quarters of the ounce.’ But the Troy pound had been used concurrently with the old mint-pound for a long time, and there had been two standards at the mint.
According to an anonymous writer in 1507 (quoted in Snelling’s ‘View of the Silver Coin and Coinage,’ 1762) ‘it is a right great untruth and deceit that any such pound Toweres should be occupied, for that thereby the merchant is deceived subtilly and the mint master is thereby profited.’