Definition
A fee paid by vassals to their feudal lord in exchange for the sharpening of plowing implements. Agusadura appears in ancient customary law as one of several incidental dues owed by tenants to their lord as part of the broader system of feudal obligations. It is a term of historical significance only, with no continuing application in modern law.
Why It Matters in Research
Agusadura is the kind of narrow customary fee that surfaces primarily in treatises on feudal tenure, manorial law, and the history of agricultural servitude. Researchers encountering it are almost certainly working in pre-modern English or Continental legal history, or in scholarship tracing the transition from feudal dues to modern landlord-tenant relations.
The term belongs to a cluster of incidental feudal obligations — distinct from rent, from labor services such as boon-days or corvée, and from major incidents such as relief or wardship — that attached to villeinage or customary tenure. When reading manorial records, court rolls, or early treatises on tenure, researchers should be alert to the distinction between these minor service-fees and the larger incidents of tenure that received more systematic legal treatment.
Because agusadura is a term drawn from customary practice rather than from statute or common law doctrine, it is unlikely to appear in plea rolls or Year Books. It is more likely to appear in local custumals, estate records, or antiquarian legal compilations. Researchers working in ecclesiastical or monastic estate records may also encounter analogous terms under different names depending on region and period.
The fragment appearing in Black's Law Dictionary under the agriculture entry is unrelated to agusadura and appears to be a source-compilation artifact — researchers should not treat the Pennsylvania and Tennessee case references in that fragment as bearing on agusadura.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) provide identical entries: agusadura is defined as a fee due from vassals to their lord for sharpening their plowing tackle. No further elaboration is offered in either edition, and neither source traces the term to a specific jurisdiction, statutory authority, or treatise. This brevity is consistent with the term's character as a minor relic of customary tenure rather than a term with an active common law history.
Neither edition situates agusadura within a broader taxonomy of feudal dues, but it belongs naturally alongside similar incidental services and payments — such as multure (the fee for grinding grain at the lord's mill) and pannage (the fee for grazing swine in the lord's wood) — that characterized the manorial system. Historical legal dictionaries generally treat these dues as curiosities rather than as living doctrine, and researchers should approach agusadura accordingly.
No divergence between editions is present here; the entries are verbatim equivalents.
Jurisdictional Note
Agusadura appears to derive from Spanish or medieval Latin terminology, suggesting possible application in Iberian customary law or in the law of regions subject to Spanish feudal influence. Its appearance in English-language legal dictionaries likely reflects antiquarian completeness rather than English common law practice. Researchers working in Spanish colonial legal history or in comparative feudal law may find the term more functionally relevant than those working in the English common law tradition.