Definition
A bill of store is a license issued at the custom-house authorizing merchants to carry provisions, naval stores, and other supplies necessary for a voyage free of customs duty. It is an instrument of English customs administration, functioning as an official exemption from duties that would otherwise attach to goods loaded aboard a vessel before departure. The term is primarily historical and arises in the context of English maritime trade regulation.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "A license granted at the customhouse to merchants, to carry such stores and provisions as are necessary for a voyage, custom free."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; the component words "bill" (a written instrument or document) and "store" (a stock of supplies) would have been understood in their ordinary senses.
The Wiktionary definition here is drawn directly from the legal sources and is functionally identical to the legal meaning. However, a researcher encountering the phrase in a general context might read it loosely as any inventory document or supply manifest. The legal meaning is narrower and specific: it is an official government-issued license, not a private record of goods. The customs-exemption function is the operative legal feature, not the list of provisions itself.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is encountered almost exclusively in historical English legal sources, customs records, and admiralty materials. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century maritime, trade, or customs law contexts should be aware of several navigational points.
First, the bill of store belongs to a family of customs-house instruments — alongside bills of entry, bills of lading, and cockets — that were formally distinct but are sometimes loosely grouped in historical sources. Confusing a bill of store with a bill of lading is a material error: the bill of lading is a carrier's receipt and contract of carriage governing the cargo; the bill of store is a customs exemption for the ship's own provisions, not for commercial cargo.
Second, the term appears in English legal dictionaries as a settled term of art but has essentially no independent doctrinal development in American law. Researchers in American legal history are unlikely to encounter it in domestic statutory or case law; its appearance in American legal dictionaries reflects the wholesale importation of English mercantile terminology rather than American legal practice.
Third, because the exemption covered only goods "necessary for the voyage," disputes could arise at the custom-house over whether particular goods qualified. Historical customs records and admiralty proceedings may reflect such disputes, and researchers should look to the administrative and equitable customs jurisdiction, not common-law courts, as the primary forum.
Fourth, Burrill's entry contains what appears to be a printing corruption or typographical scramble — text describing a "memorandum of the delivery of a writ" and references to the Statute of Westminster 2 and Fleta are interspersed with the bill of store definition. Researchers relying on Burrill should treat that entry with caution; the intrusion of unrelated material reflects a compositing error, not a dual meaning of the term.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical dictionaries — Black's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill — converge on a single definition and trace it to Jacob's Law Dictionary and Cowell's Interpreter as the common authority. The agreement is essentially complete on substance: a customs-house license for duty-free carriage of voyage provisions. McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary is also cited in Burrill as a corroborating source, reflecting the term's grounding in commercial rather than purely legal reference works.
None of the historical sources provide doctrinal analysis, judicial interpretation, or statutory context beyond the bare definition. This is consistent with the term's character as an administrative instrument of customs practice rather than a litigated legal concept. The absence of case law discussion in any of the three dictionaries is itself informative: researchers should not expect a developed body of precedent.
Burrill's entry is the most expansive of the three but is corrupted by apparent typesetting error, rendering portions of the entry unreliable. Researchers should not read the Fleta or Westminster 2 citations as pertaining to bills of store.
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Jurisdictional Note
The bill of store is a creature of English customs law with no established American equivalent. American customs administration developed its own statutory framework, and the term does not appear as a term of art in U.S. federal customs statutes or regulations. Researchers encountering the term in American legal dictionaries should understand it as carried over from English sources for completeness, not as reflecting domestic American practice.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Bills of Lading — Document of Title, Receipt, and Contract of Carriage (The Law Mind Military, Veterans & Admiralty Law Encyclopedia): Provides essential context on the family of maritime commercial documents within which the bill of store must be distinguished.
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