The need for fixed, uniform, standards of Weights and Measures was early acknowledged in this country. Phoenicians, Saxons, Scandinavians and Romans had each brought some system of measurement, but inevitably variations throughout different parts of the land were rife. In the reign of King Edgar, some 100 years before the Norman Conquest, a law required a set of weights and measures to be kept at Winchester, and William I, acknowledging these standards, tried to preserve them by a decree stating that they should be used in all parts of the country This did little more than accentuate the irregularities.