Definition
In old English law, a bullary or boilary — a place or facility used for boiling, specifically in the context of salt production. The term appears in two related constructions:
(1) Bullaria aquæ salsæ: a boilary of salt water; a salt-house or salt-pit where brine was boiled down to produce salt.
(2) Bullitio salis: a boiling of salt; a unit of production measured by a single boiling of brine — that is, as much salt as could be produced from one boiling. This second form functions as a term of quantity or yield, not merely a description of a place.
Both usages are rooted in the medieval salt trade and the legal instruments — grants, conveyances, and pleadings — that described salt-producing property and its associated rights.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of bullarium (a collection of papal bulls).
Historical common usage: Not recorded in Webster's 1913 in this form.
The Wiktionary entry reflects an entirely different Latin root. The ecclesiastical bullarium (from bulla, meaning seal or papal document) has no connection to bullaria as used in English property law, where the term derives from bullire, to boil. A researcher encountering bullaria in a medieval or early modern legal source must determine from context which tradition applies — the ecclesiastical or the salt-production sense.
Why It Matters in Research
Bullaria is a term that surfaces almost exclusively in old English property records, pleadings, and real property treatises dealing with salt works, particularly in regions where brine springs and coastal salt production were economically significant. Researchers working through medieval conveyancing documents, manorial records, or early common law pleadings may encounter the term when the subject property includes or abuts salt-producing facilities.
The dual construction — bullaria as a physical place and bullitio salis as a unit of yield — creates a potential reading trap. In a grant or plea, bullaria names the property or facility; bullitio salis describes what the facility produces and in what quantity. Conflating the two can distort the legal meaning of what was conveyed or at issue.
The term's disappearance from practice means it will not appear in modern secondary sources. Researchers must rely on Burrill, Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 4b), and Cowell's Interpreter for definitional grounding. Townshend's Pleas (Towns. Pl. 57) is cited by Burrill as a procedural reference, suggesting the term appeared in pleading contexts, not just in conveyances.
For corpus researchers, the Latin form bullaria aquæ salsæ is the version most likely to appear in primary sources. Variant spellings of boilary (boilarie, boillorie, and the Law French boillourie) may appear in the same documents, and cross-referencing these forms is essential to comprehensive searching.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical dictionary source providing a definition. Burrill treats the term concisely but helpfully, giving both the place-meaning and the yield-meaning, citing Coke on Littleton for the property context and Cowell for the production-quantity sense. No other historical legal dictionary in the standard shelf — not Black's, not Bouvier — carries this term, which is consistent with its purely archaic, specialized status.
Burrill's entry preserves the Law French form (boillourie) alongside the Latin, which is useful: Law French variants are precisely the forms a researcher might encounter in year book entries or early plea rolls without recognizing the connection to the Latin term.
The reference to Co. Litt. 4b grounds the term in Coke's commentary on Littleton's Tenures, where salt-houses appear among examples of property capable of being held by various tenures. This is the most authoritative doctrinal anchor the term has in English legal literature.
Jurisdictional Note
Bullaria as a legal term of art is specific to old English law and has no recognized equivalent in American property law. It may appear in historical title chains for properties in English coastal or brine-spring regions, but it carries no operative legal meaning in modern practice in any common law jurisdiction.