COSHERING

Definition

A feudal prerogative or custom by which a lord was entitled to lodge and feast himself and his retinue at his tenants' houses, at the tenant's expense. Coshering was a form of compulsory hospitality — a burden imposed on tenants as an incident of their tenure — requiring them to receive and provision the lord when he chose to visit. In practice, it functioned as an irregular form of in-kind taxation: rather than a fixed monetary render, the tenant bore the cost of the lord's consumption directly. The custom was associated particularly with Irish and Welsh feudal practice, where it persisted longer than in England proper, and was regarded by common law commentators as an oppressive and ill-defined obligation. Cowell, cited by all major historical dictionaries, treated coshering as a recognized if archaic feudal incident at the time of his writing.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "The levying of a cosher, or tribute." Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A feudal prerogative of the lord of the soil entitling him to lodging and food at his tenant's house." Webster's also notes the practice's persistence in Ireland, where dispossessed lords, defying law, quartered themselves on tenants "who, wretched as was their own condition, could not refuse a portion of their pittance to one whom they still regarded as their rightful lord." The gap between common and legal usage is subtle but worth flagging. Modern common usage reduces coshering to a species of tribute — a payment — while the legal and historical meaning is specifically a right of physical occupation and consumption: the lord coming to the tenant's house, eating the tenant's food, and sleeping under the tenant's roof. The distinction matters in research because coshering was not a money render but a personal burden on the tenant's household, and it sits in a different analytical category than tallage, toll, or other feudal exactions.

Why It Matters in Research

Coshering is an obsolete term that will appear almost exclusively in pre-modern English and Irish legal sources, treatises on feudal tenure, and historical commentaries on manorial custom. Researchers encountering the term in primary sources should be aware of several navigational points. First, coshering is closely associated with Irish feudal conditions and is frequently mentioned in historical accounts of Gaelic and Anglo-Norman tenure in Ireland, where the custom outlasted its English counterpart and was explicitly targeted by colonial-era statutes aimed at reducing the power of Irish chieftains over their tenants. Sources treating Irish land history, including commentary on Brehon law remnants, may use coshering in this narrower Irish context. Second, the term appears in the broader cluster of archaic feudal incidents — purveyance, boonwork, tallage, soccage — and researchers working through Cowell's Interpreter or similar early-modern legal glossaries will encounter it in that company. Understanding how these incidents were systematically abolished (in England, largely by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660) contextualizes why coshering had already become a historical curiosity by the time the major law dictionaries were compiled. Third, because coshering involves compulsory quartering, researchers working on the historical antecedents of soldiers' quartering law or the Third Amendment's background may find coshering referenced as an analogy, though the connection is imprecise — coshering was a lord's civil prerogative, not a military imposition.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in full agreement on the core definition, all citing Cowell as the authority. The definitions are functionally identical across all three sources, which suggests that by the time these dictionaries were compiled, coshering was already a settled historical term with no active legal content requiring refinement or dispute. None of the dictionary sources attempt to elaborate on the elements of the custom, its enforcement, or its abolition — a gap that reflects the term's obsolescence rather than any analytical deficiency. Webster's 1913 adds the most texture, incorporating the Irish historical context and noting that the practice continued in defiance of law as a social rather than legal phenomenon — lords without legal standing to demand coshering nonetheless extracted it through social pressure on dependent tenants. This dimension is absent from the legal dictionaries and is worth noting for researchers approaching coshering from a social or legal history angle rather than a doctrinal one. No legal dictionary source addresses the distinction between coshering as a legally recognized tenure incident and coshering as an extralegal custom that persisted after formal abolition. That distinction, visible in Webster's account, may be significant for researchers tracing the term in Irish colonial records.

Jurisdictional Note

Coshering as a legally cognizable feudal incident was associated primarily with England and Ireland, with the Irish manifestation proving more durable and historically documented. In England, feudal tenure incidents of this character were largely extinguished by the mid-seventeenth century. In Ireland, the custom's persistence into the early modern period made it a subject of colonial land legislation and administrative concern. The term has no meaningful application in American law.

Related Terms