Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning to load, or to load a vessel; also used to mean to freight a ship. The term appears in legal pleadings and writs concerning maritime commerce and the physical act of placing cargo aboard a vessel. Its companion phrase, carcare et discarcare, refers to the combined acts of loading and unloading (discharging) a vessel — the full cycle of cargo handling at a port.
Why It Matters in Research
Carcare is a term of historical and archaic significance, encountered almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources — writs, registries of original writs, and old pleading forms. Researchers working in maritime history, early English commercial law, or the history of admiralty practice may encounter it in primary sources without explanation.
The term appears in the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig.), a standard reference for early English writ practice, and in pleading texts such as Townshend's Pleadings. It is not a term of active modern legal use. If you encounter it in a historical document, it signals a context involving maritime commerce — likely a dispute over loading obligations, freight contracts, or port charges. The phrase carcare et discarcare is the more operationally significant form, as it captures the bilateral duty structure of early cargo and freight arrangements.
Researchers should be alert to the variant spelling cartatus (noted by Cowell), which refers to a loaded or freighted state and may appear in related property or commercial records. Failure to recognize these forms as cognates of carcare could cause a researcher to miss the maritime commercial context of a document.
There is no meaningful jurisdictional variation to track in a modern sense, as the term is not operative in contemporary law. Its relevance is confined to historical English law and the texts that preserved early writ and pleading practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: to load, or to load a vessel; to freight. Black's (both editions) provide the bare definition without citation. Burrill's is the most useful of the three, supplying the Latin context (L. Lat.), the key source references (Reg. Orig. 279; Towns. Pl. 59), and the cognate form cartatus via Cowell. Burrill also gives the compound phrase carcare et discarcare, which the Black's editions omit entirely.
The historical dictionaries collectively treat this as a term requiring only brief identification — it is not a doctrine or a legal test, but a vocabulary item from a period when Latin pleading forms governed commercial and maritime writs. None of the dictionaries address any evolution in meaning, because the term did not evolve; it dropped out of use as Latin pleading was abolished and English replaced Latin in legal proceedings.
Researchers should note that historical dictionaries of this era often cross-reference Cowell's Interpreter, a glossary of law terms compiled by John Cowell in the early seventeenth century, which provides additional context for archaic Latin and Law French terms not fully explained in the standard digest literature.