"Breaking of Square"
"An inche breakth no square : whiche sins thou hast hard tell
Thou dost assay how to break square by an ell."
-- The Proverbs, Epigrams, and Miscellanies of John Heywood by John Heywood, 1562
To break squares is an English idiom originally meaning to depart from the norm or to change one's ways. It appears, as shown above, to have originated as "break square", meaning to become off kilter. The phrase is quite often associated with inches, although thankfully the ell (about 45 inches), fell out of popular usage fairly early on.
"Inches disn't break squares in a load of whins"
A traditional Ulster saying
"An inch breaks no squares in a burn of thorns
A traditional English saying
While complaints about carrying loads of thorns (usually metaphorical) are the most common proverbs to use breaking squares, the phrase took on another meaning sometime circa the 1700s. When used on its own, to break squares can also mean to cause trouble, to disagree or to quarrel; this is especially true when used in the negative: to "break no squares" means to avoid causing trouble. Webster's 1828 dictionary included an example of 'break no squares' refering to a wish not to cause trouble ("I shall break no squares with another for a trifle."), and by 1918 had expanded this to "to give no offense; to make no difference" (see entry under 'square').
Sadly, this idiom fell out of use sometime in the mid-1800s, and one rarely hears of broken squares today.