That there were two different gallons, the one for wine, the other for corn, is shown in the Ordinance 31 Edw. III, where it is ordered that ‘8 lb. of wheat shall make a gallon.’ It is true that this is continued by ‘the lb. shall contain 20 s.’; but very soon after the ordinance states that, for everything except groceries, each lb. shall be of 25 s., and we know that the 25 s. was merely a subterfuge to show the averdepois pound as 15 ounces Tower, afterwards 15 ounces Troy, neither of which it ever was: we may therefore dismiss this statement, and recognise that the wine-gallon held approximately 8 averdepois lb. of wine, and that the corn gallon, about one-fourth larger, held 8 averdepois lb. of wheat.
Further evidence is to be found in 12 Henry VII (1496).
This statute, after the usual preamble about ‘one weight and one measure,’ orders:
That the measure of a Bushel contain 8 gallons of wheat, and that every Gallon contain 8 lb. of wheat of Troy weight, and every Pound contain 12 ounces of Troy weight, and every Ounce contain 20 sterlings and every Sterling be of the weight of 32 Corns of wheat that grew in the midst of the ear of wheat according to the old law of the land.
While the bushel is now described as containing 8 gallons of wheat and each gallon 8 pounds of wheat, the old fiction is kept up that these are royal pounds. Only these pounds are now Troy, of 5760 grains, instead of Tower, of 5400 grains; 64 Troy pounds were equal to 52-2/3 lb. averdepois, a weight still far from the 62-1/2 lb. averdepois of wheat contained in the extant bushel-measure of Henry VII. And though the mints were coining 420, instead of 240, pennies from the 5760 grain-pound of silver, so that these were little more than half the weight of Henry III’s pennies, yet they were still of the weight of 32 wheat-corns.
The substance of this statute was embodied in a State-document adorned with a picture of the King’s Steward presiding over the gauging of bushels and weighing of wheat-corns, surmounted by a picture of two entwined wheat-ears with the inscription:
The whete eare. Two graynes maketh the xvi p^{ te}. of a penny, ffower graynes maketh the viij p^{ te}. of a penny.
After this impudent assertion one is not surprised to read that it was ‘the same tyme ordeired that xvi uncs of Troie maketh the Haberty poie a pounde for to buy spice[23] by,’ nor by the statement that ‘the C is true at this daye, ffyve score for the hundred as appeareth in Magna Carta.’