Definition
A feudal obligation, recognized in old English law, requiring the carrying of goods or other things for the king. Cariagium referred to the compulsory transport service owed to the Crown — typically the use of a subject's horses and carts to move royal goods, supplies, or equipment. It was a form of prerogative burden imposed on the king's subjects and their property, without necessarily requiring compensation.
Common Confusion
Cariagium should not be confused with the modern legal concept of carriage of goods, which arises from contract and carries full commercial rights and duties between carrier and shipper. Cariagium was an imposed royal prerogative, not a consensual commercial arrangement. The word "carriage" in modern transportation law and the word "carriage" in cariagium share a linguistic root but belong to entirely different legal frameworks.
Why It Matters in Research
Cariagium appears almost exclusively in sources addressing Magna Carta, the Statute of Westminster I, and related feudal prerogative obligations. Researchers encountering the term in medieval English legal records, Year Books, or early common law commentary should treat it as a marker for the broader category of royal purveyance and prerogative exaction — a cluster of obligations that generated sustained political and legal conflict across the thirteenth through seventeenth centuries.
The term is rarely encountered in post-seventeenth-century sources because the prerogative of purveyance — of which cariagium was a component — was abolished by statute in the Restoration period. Researchers working in early modern English legal history should note this cutoff: references to cariagium in sources after roughly 1660 are likely historical or antiquarian in character, not operative legal claims.
The Magna Carta provision quoted in Burrill — drawn from the charter of 9 Henry III, chapter 21 — is the anchor text for cariagium in English legal history. That provision expressly restrained sheriffs from seizing horses or carts to perform carriage service without the owner's consent. The parallel provision in Westminster I reinforced the limitation. Understanding cariagium thus requires reading it against the broader arc of Magna Carta scholarship and the development of restraints on royal purveyance. Researchers tracing the constitutional history of property protections against government taking will find cariagium an early data point in that lineage, well before modern takings doctrine emerged.
Because the term appears infrequently and in archaic Latin form, it is easily overlooked in searches relying on English-language keyword indexing. Researchers working in digitized manuscript collections or early printed law books should search variant spellings and the French form cariage, which appears in Anglo-Norman legal texts.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries converge tightly on meaning: cariagium denotes the obligation of carrying goods for the king, derived from the Latin cariare (to carry). Black's (both editions) provides the core definition without elaboration. Burrill adds the most substance, quoting the Magna Carta provision directly and noting the parallel Westminster I text, which confirms that the term had statutory recognition and was understood as a subject of legal limitation from early in English constitutional history.
None of the historical dictionaries situate cariagium within the broader framework of royal purveyance or connect it to the prerogative's eventual abolition. Researchers should supplement these entries with treatment in Coke's Institutes and Blackstone's Commentaries, where purveyance and related royal burdens are analyzed more fully in their constitutional context.
Jurisdictional Note
Cariagium is a term of English law with no direct analog in American legal history. American legal sources do not use the term. Researchers encountering it will do so exclusively in English or British historical legal materials.