Definition
A Latin term used in old English law meaning "to charge." The word appears in medieval legal instruments and records to indicate the act of imposing a charge, burden, or obligation — whether financial, legal, or proprietary — upon a person or property.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter cargare almost exclusively in medieval English legal manuscripts, plea rolls, and Latin-language documents predating the gradual shift to English in legal proceedings. Its significance is narrow but specific: the term signals the imposition of a charge or burden in a formal legal sense and should not be passed over as mere scribal Latin. Because old English law operated extensively through Latin formulae, cargare may appear in contexts involving the charging of accounts, the burdening of land, or the formal accusation of a party — meanings that overlap but are not identical.
The primary trap for researchers is terminological collapse: cargare, onerare, and gravare all circulated in medieval Latin legal usage with partially overlapping meanings related to burden or charge. A document using cargare may be doing something subtly different from one using onerare, and the distinction may matter to the specific legal act being recorded. Context — whether the document concerns land, debt, or criminal accusation — is essential to correct interpretation.
The term also illustrates a broader research problem with Law Latin: words borrowed or adapted from post-classical Latin often carried technical meanings in English legal practice that diverged from their counterparts in continental civil law sources. Cargare in an English plea roll is not necessarily equivalent to its use in a continental instrument, and researchers drawing on comparative sources should not assume uniformity.
Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum is the authority cited by all three source dictionaries, and researchers needing deeper context should consult that work directly. Spelman remains the primary scholarly reference for obsolete Law Latin of this kind.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill's — offer identical entries: "In old English law. To charge. Spelman." The uniformity here reflects copying from a single authoritative source rather than independent corroboration. None of the entries attempt to expand on the specific legal contexts in which the term appeared, the range of legal acts it might describe, or its relationship to synonymous Latin terms. This is a case where the historical dictionaries provide a reliable minimum — the basic gloss is almost certainly correct — but offer nothing beyond it. Researchers cannot rely on these entries alone to determine what kind of charge is meant in a specific document.
Jurisdictional Note
Cargare is exclusively an old English law term. It has no recognized meaning in American, Scottish, or other common law traditions outside of historical scholarship, and no modern legal system employs it as operative terminology.