cade

In England, 15th – 18th centuries, a unit based on a small cask. Though it is mentioned in connection with grains, it was largely a unit of count for fish.

As a unit of count, the cade was associated with a special definition of “hundred.” In 1502, Arnold stated there were 5 hundred in a cade, with 6 score 4 herrings for the hundred, that is, 620 herrings in a cade.

Compare mease.

Two centuries later Worlidge (see below) gives much the same definition.

Richard Arnold.
The Customs of England, otherwise called Arnold's Chronicle....
London, 1502, reprinted 1811.

Sources

Herrings,
white full or shotteny^e          last cont. xij bar^lls
red                                      the cade cont. five hundred
red                                      the last cont. xx cades

[for export]
Spratts the Cade cont a thounsad

Winter Herrings red full, the cade cont. five hundred;
the Last cont. 20 cades or ten thousandsand

“A Subsidy granted to the King of Tonnage and Poundage and other summes of Money payable upon Merchandize Exported and Imported.”
A statute from the 12th year of Charles II, 1660. The selection is from the Booke of Rates, which is not part of the statute proper but developed from it. Both are printed in:
Statutes of the Realm, Volume 5: 1628-80, John Raithby, editor.
London: 1819.

Using the long hundred of 120, "five hundred" is 600.

CADE; is a Measure, viz. of Red-herrings 500, Sprats 1000; yet I find anciently 600 made the Cade of Herrings, Six score to the Hundred, which is called Magnum Centum.

Worlidge, 1704.

CADE, in the Book of Rates is us'd for a certain determinate Number of some kinds of Fish; as a Cade of Herrings is 500, of Sprats iis 1000.

John Harris.
Lexicon Technicum, or a Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences....
London: Printed for D. Brown, et al 1723.