Definition
A license issued at the English custom-house authorizing a merchant to trade between English ports without paying customs duties on goods carried in that coastal trade. The bill functioned as an official permission slip that exempted the holder from duties that would otherwise attach to domestic port-to-port commerce. It was a creature of English customs administration, not general commercial law.
Common Confusion
The word "sufferance" in this term carries its older legal sense of passive permission or tolerance — that is, the crown or customs authority suffers (permits) the merchant to trade duty-free. This is distinct from "tenancy at sufferance," where sufferance describes the landlord's passive toleration of a holdover tenant. Researchers encountering "sufferance" in historical sources should identify which legal context is operative before drawing any inference about meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a narrow historical artifact of English customs law and is unlikely to appear in American legal sources except in encyclopedic or comparative contexts. Researchers working in:
— English commercial or maritime history prior to the 19th century should expect to encounter this term in customs records, port authority documents, and trade litigation.
— Colonial American sources may occasionally reference the bill of sufferance when discussing coastal trade regulated under English navigation and customs statutes, particularly the Navigation Acts and their successors.
— The statutory anchor is 14 Car. II, c. 11, cited by Rapalje & Lawrence — this is the English statute from the reign of Charles II that formalized coastal trade licensing. Researchers tracing the term to its legislative source should begin there.
— The term has no meaningful modern American counterpart. Contemporary domestic shipping and customs law is governed by entirely different federal regulatory frameworks. Do not attempt to map this concept onto modern U.S. customs or admiralty doctrine.
— The Cowell attribution in both Black's and Burrill's points to John Cowell's The Interpreter (1607), a foundational glossary of English legal terms. This signals that the bill of sufferance was already being defined as a technical term of art in the early 17th century — researchers in early modern English trade law should consult Cowell directly for the original framing.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in near-perfect agreement: all four define the bill of sufferance as a license granted at the custom-house permitting coastal trade between English ports without payment of customs. The uniformity is notable and reflects the term's stable, narrow meaning — it was never a contested or evolving concept but a defined instrument of customs administration.
Black's and Burrill's are essentially identical, both citing Cowell as authority, suggesting a shared lineage. Bouvier's is slightly more compressed but substantively equivalent. Rapalje & Lawrence adds the most research value by citing the specific statute (14 Car. II, c. 11) and cross-referencing the related entry for Bill of Complaint — a useful navigational signal that "bill" in this era carries multiple meanings across entirely different legal contexts.
None of the historical dictionaries address the bill of sufferance's practical administration, its procedural requirements, or what happened upon violation. Researchers needing that operational detail must go beyond the standard dictionaries to customs records, the statutes themselves, or historical treatises on English trade law.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively English in origin and application. It has no direct American equivalent. Researchers working in U.S. law will encounter it only as a historical reference or in texts discussing the English legal inheritance. Modern coastal trade in the United States is governed by the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (Jones Act) and federal customs regulations — neither of which uses this terminology.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry addresses English customs licensing or the bill of sufferance directly. The matching suggestions (Torts, Constitutional Law, GI Bill) are not relevant to this term. Omitted.