From what I have read the original Roman mile is 5000 feet (mille passus) and a Roman foot is slightly shorter than our modern foot. I also read the in ~1500 the definition of a mile was 8 furlongs at 625 German/northern feet per furlong (therefore 5000 feet) and a German foot was longer than our modern feet and then during her reign Queen Elizabeth I shortened the foot but kept the length if a furlong and mile increasing the length if a furlong to 660 and increasing a mile by 280. Why did Elizabeth shorten the length of a foot to something more like the Roman foot?
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ancient and pre-modern units varied from place to place – there was an Athenian cubit, a Macedonian cubit, an Irish mile, an English mile, a Winchester bushel and a Manchester bushel, a Parisian pound and a pound tournois and so on. Chancelleries usually adopted one single measure, but this could be any one of those on offer (and in a decentralised country like France there were several chancelleries) – and anyway that was just for dealing with the government. Elizabeth’s officials may have just picked one.
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