Definition
In old English law, a bundle or pack. The term appears in medieval legal and administrative contexts as a unit of measurement or description for goods, particularly bundled or packaged cargo. It is the Latinized form of the vernacular "fardel" and carries the same meaning.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Fardel" (the vernacular root) survives in archaic or literary English as a bundle or burden, most famously in Shakespeare's use of the word in Hamlet ("who would fardels bear").
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A fardel is defined as a bundle or little pack; a burden.
The gap between common and legal usage here is narrow in meaning but significant in context. In legal sources, fardella appears not as a literary or colloquial term for any burden but as a specific descriptive or administrative term used in medieval English law to identify bundled goods, likely in the context of customs, tolls, or trade regulation.
Common Confusion
Fardella is sometimes loosely equated with fardingdeal (also spelled fardingdel, fardindel, farthindel, or farundel), a distinct term referring to the fourth part of an acre of land. Burrill notes Spelman's view that fardel and fardingdeal may share a common root or even identical meaning in some contexts, but the prevailing authority treats them as separate: fardella refers to bundled goods, while fardingdeal is a unit of land measurement equivalent to the Latin quadrantata terrae. A researcher encountering either term in a medieval document should confirm which concept is operative before drawing conclusions about the subject matter — commercial goods or real property.
Why It Matters in Research
Fardella is a narrow, historically bounded term with no modern legal application. Its relevance is almost entirely confined to the reading of medieval English legal records, particularly those touching on trade, tolls, port customs, or the regulation of merchants. Researchers working in that period should note several navigational points.
First, the sole authority cited in every major dictionary entry is Fleta, lib. 1, c. 22, § 10. Fleta is a late thirteenth-century English legal treatise, and this single cross-reference suggests the term's footprint in formal legal literature is quite small. Researchers should not expect broad doctrinal elaboration elsewhere.
Second, the spelling variants are significant. Medieval Latin legal manuscripts rendered the vernacular English and French word "fardel" in multiple Latinized forms. A document search relying on a single spelling will miss variants. The related term fardingdeal alone appears in Burrill under at least five spelling variants.
Third, fardella sits within a family of medieval commercial and agrarian measurement terms — alongside fardingdeal and cognate units — that were part of the administrative vocabulary of tolls, market regulation, and land division. A researcher tracing the legal treatment of bundled goods in transit, customs duties, or merchant liability will need fluency in this vocabulary to interpret source documents correctly.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill — are in full agreement: fardella means a bundle or pack, synonymous with fardel, and all three cite Fleta as the sole authority. This unanimity, combined with the brevity of each entry, reflects the term's limited doctrinal significance. It was a descriptive term of art, not a concept generating legal rules or litigation.
Burrill adds the most texture by pairing fardella immediately with fardingdeal and noting Spelman's view that the two terms may be related or identical. This is the only point of any complexity across the three sources, and it serves primarily to flag the confusion risk discussed above rather than to expand the definition of fardella itself.
No historical dictionary provides context beyond the single Fleta citation, and none locates fardella within a broader legal framework. Researchers needing to understand how bundled goods were treated in medieval English commercial or customs law will need to go directly to primary sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Fardella is a term of old English law with no recognized equivalent or survival in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. Its relevance is confined to English legal history prior to the modern period.