TROY WEIGHT. Neither the etymology nor the time of intro duction of this denomination is well known. Tho received opinion is that it took its name from a weight used at the fair of Troyes : this is likely enough, since we find more than one large town the weights of which became standards: thus we have the pound of Cologne, of Toulouse, and perhaps also of Troyes.
That there was a very old English standard pound of twelve ounces is a well determined fact; and also that this pound existed long before the name Troy was given to it, another. There were also the mer chants' pound of fifteen ounces, and the Tower pound, having twelve ounces of its own, but less than the Troy pound by three-quarters of an ounce. Though the troy pound was mentioned as a known weight in 2 Henry V., cap. 4 (1414), and 2 Henry VI., cap. 13 (1423), the term troy was not applied to the legal standard pound till 12 Henry VII. (1495). The merchants' pound seems to have been the origin of AVOIRDUPOIS weight.
Tho troy pound has continued to be the legal standard down to the present time, though only actually used in weighing precious metals and stones, and apothecaries' drugs. It had precisely the same limi
tation of use in the time of Pieta, who is supposed to have lived in the reign of Edward I. There is no doubt that it was originally the pound of silver, the pound sterling, and there is evidence that this pound was sometimes described as divided into twenty parts called shillings. The famous statute of Henry I. (1266) makes a standard for it from the weight of ears of wheat.
The pound troy is now divided, for gold and silver, into twelve ounces, each ounce into twenty pennyweights, and each pennyweight into twenty-four grains. But for medicines, it is divided into twelve ounces, each ounce into eight drams or drachms, each drachm into three scruples, and each scruple into twenty grains. A cubic foot of water weighs pounds troy. [WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.]