This weight is recorded and illustrated in Edward Jones' Historical Records of Newport. It was excavated in December 1833 at the Lower Bar, Newport, which, Jones records, was the location for the collection of tolls on all goods entering the town of Newport from the direction of Chester. The practice of imposing customs duties and taxes on all wool brought into boroughs was regulated by the use of such standard weights, the Pondus regis. The official whose duty it was to make use of these weights for measuring wool was known as the tronagor, and it was he who determined the custom duty or toll, known as the tronnage. He transported and made use of his weight by means of a leather thong or strap, inserted through the loop beneath the royal escutcheon, thus to hold the weight upside down. The Wool Taxes, or king's dues, for several centuries constituted a large part of national revenue, sometimes accounting for as much as three-quarters of the total. The wool-weights issued to the tronagor remained the State property, and as such were regarded as of considerable importance. As new weights were issued, the old ones were recalled - at the risk of heavy fines for non-compliance - and therefore such weights are nowadays very rare.
In a footnote, Jones also makes mention of the theory that this could perhaps be what was known as an "awncell" or "auncel" weight. In the Interpreter, 1658, a Mr Cowell mentions that the "Auncel weight, as I have been informed, is a kind of weight with scales hanging on hooks fastened at each end of a staff, which a man lifteth upon his forefinger or hand, and so discovereth the equality or difference between the weight and the thing weighed...A man of good credit once certified mee that it is still used in Leaden-all at London among butchers". And the awncell, or auncel, also occurs in William Langland's 15th-century narrative poem Piers of the Ploughman:
Ac the pound that she paied by
Peised a quatron moore
Than myn owene auncer
Who so weyed truthe