The half-barrel of 18 gallons was called a Kilderkin, from the old Flemish word _kinderkin_, a little child. To it corresponded the Runlet of 18-1/2 wine-gallons (1483), the German Eimer or double Anker.
The quarter-barrel of 9 gallons is a Firkin, a word in which _vierde_, a fourth, replaces _kinder_; so that in the fifteenth century it was a Ferdekyn.
But the ale-barrel remained nominally at 32 gallons, its kilderkin at 16, its firkin at 8 gallons. This counterbalanced the increase of the ale-gallon to 282 c.i. How did this rise come about? The probable explanation is that the ale-gallon was really a corn-gallon of Henry VII and VIII; it disappeared for corn, but it remained for ale.
Henry III proclaimed on his accession that, according to Magna Charta, there should be but one standard of measure and of weight throughout the realm, one measure of wine, one measure of ale, and one measure of corn.
There seems to be no information extant about the second of these measures; it was presumably the same as the corn-gallon. A statute of Henry VIII ordered the barrel of beer to be 36 gallons and that of ale 32 gallons, whence it may be presumed that the former were wine-gallons and the latter corn-gallons, 32 and 36 being taken as the whole numbers nearly proportionate to wine and corn measure, and admitting of the quarter-barrel being 8 gallons of ale and 9 of beer.[26]
For a long time the difference between ale and beer was that beer was hopped.
In 1496 (temp. Henry VII) a new corn-bushel was made = 2240 c.i., its gallon being 280 c.i. While it is possible that this increase was due to inaccurate casting, yet it might be that the new corn-gallon was intended to be on a water-wheat ratio with the wine-gallon, then = 224 c.i. (224 × 1-1/4 = 280), in the same way that the usual corn-gallon of 270 c.i. was in that ratio to the original 1/8 cubic foot gallon of 216 c.i. (216 × 1-1/4 = 270).[27]
It has been suggested that the 280 c.i. corn-gallon was constructed so as to have Averdepois-Troy ratio to the 231 c.i. wine-gallon (1·215 : 1). But the latter had not at the time risen to 231 c.i., and it is more probable that the ratio was that of water to wheat, the pound-pint ratio.
In 1531 the corn-gallon was increased to 282 c.i. But under Elizabeth the corn-gallon was restored to its old standard of 1/8 bushel = 2150·4/8 c.i. = 268·8 c.i. and the wine-gallon fixed at 231 c.i. At these standards both gallons stood until their unification in 1824. Confirmed by Queen Anne, they are known by her name.