But by 13 Wm. III (1702) and by 5 Anne (1707) the London bushel was the standard, and this is the present corn-bushel of the United States. It is, however, commonly called, but inaccurately, a Winchester bushel.
When the Cwt. was raised to 112 lb. and the Ton to 2240 lb. the Chaldron or ton-measure of wheat was increased by statute from 4 × 8 = 32 bushels to 36 bushels. One would think it would follow that the Quarter would be raised from 8 to 9 bushels. No, it was not raised, by law at least; so the corn-trade raised it themselves, thinking that evidently if a chaldron is now 36 bushels, for the quarter of it we must ask or give 9 bushels.
But this practice was apparently held to be an offence against the repeated royal declarations beginning with the 32 wheat-corn weight of the penny and ending with the ‘bushel which is the eighth part of the Quarter.’ While one statute raised the Chaldron to 36 bushels, another declared that its quarter was to remain at 8 bushels. In 15 Rich. II (1391) it is declared that ‘8 bushels striked should make the Quarter of corn nevertheless that divers people will not buy but 9 bushels for the Quarter.’
As statutes of 1436 and 1496 repeated this prohibition of any increase of the quarter one may presume that the forbidden practice continued, the increased quarter being called a Vat. But there was another way of evading these statutes; the old story with bad legislation; _Fatta la lege, trovato l’inganno_. It became in many parts customary to give, not a long-quarter, but a long-bushel of 9 gallons, so that 8 long-bushels would make the new quarter-chaldron. It was possibly a relic of this practice which caused the Chester corn-measure to become 70 lb., roughly 62-1/2 lb. × 9/8 = 70·3 lb. Cheshire perhaps benefited by its neighbourhood to Lancashire, which was specially exempted by 13 Rich. II from the penalties for offences against the unity of weights and measures, ‘because in that county it hath always been used to have greater measure than in any other part of the realm.’[28] Yet long-bushels are sometimes the striked equivalents of heaped measure.
Curiously Lancashire still uses the Cheshire acre, and in some parts a pound of butter is a pound + the weight of 2 pennies, formerly the heavy Georgian ounce-pennies, now the lighter bronze coins.