The Estrée or Seterée (Setier seed-land) might be divided into 12 Boisselées (small-bushel lands).
The royal pound, _livre poids de marc_, the double-marc of Troyes, was one of several pounds current in Northern France. It was, like the royal foot, ascribed to Charlemagne, but his standard of weight, as known by his silver pennies, nearly always much above 24 grains, 1/20 of some ounce heavier than that of the Troyes marc, was probably altered later on. The royal pound, = 5570 grains, was raised for commercial purposes (about 1350) to 16 ounces = 7554·1 grains, the ounce = 472·13 grains.
The weight of the 12-ounce pound coincides very closely with that of the Bosphoric miná, 100 drachmæ of 56·66 grains; this is perhaps the origin of the story that it was sent to Charlemagne by Harūn al Rashid. Its ounce is also approximately the Tripoli ukyé of 10 dirhems × 470-3/4 grains, and nearer still to 471 grains, the weight of 10 of the dirhems of which 8 made the Provençal ounce.
It is probable that the French pound was one of the lighter pounds of the variable Northern Troy series, all with an ounce of 10 dirhems of 48 grains more or less.
The ounce was divided into 8 gros, groats or drachms, of 3 deniers or dwt., each of 24 grains. So the livre was 16 × 24 × 24 = 9216 French grains. These were light grains, not the heavy grains, 20 × 24 to the ounce, of English and other mint-weights.
There was a Quintal of 100 livres = 107·7 lb.
The Tonne or tonneau was 2000 livres = 2154 lb.
The French coinage-system, probably instituted by Charlemagne, was the same as ours. The original unit was the silver penny, _estelin_ (sterling) or denier (L. _denarius_) of 24 French grains; 12 deniers made a sol or sou (L. _solidus_, shilling) and 20 sols made the livre or pound, originally a livre d’estelins, a 12-ounce pound of sterlings. But the silver coinage shrank and was debased, until, by the eighteenth century, the pound, livre or franc was a silver coin worth tenpence, the sol a copper halfpenny, and the denier had shrunk, even as copper, to so minute a size that its place was taken by the _liard_, a small copper coin of 3 deniers, a quarter-sou; even the _double_ of 2 deniers had disappeared. Accounts were kept in livres and sols and deniers, our £ _s._ _d._, but at 1/25 the present value of our coin.