Definition
A feudal obligation by which certain provisions or supplies were owed by custom to the royal purveyors — agents of the Crown authorized to requisition goods, particularly food and fodder, for the monarch's household or military forces. The term denotes both the obligation itself and the customary renders of goods it required. Fodertorium was not a voluntary transfer but a compulsory contribution exacted by prerogative right, with the specific type and quantity of goods determined by local custom.
Why It Matters in Research
This is an archaic term of medieval English feudal administration, and researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in historical legal sources, glossaries of feudal tenure, and commentary on royal prerogative. Several navigational points apply:
First, the term is drawn by Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence directly from Cowell's Interpreter (1607), a foundational glossary of legal terms that itself was controversial and suppressed shortly after publication. Researchers relying on fodertorium in any source should trace that source back to Cowell, as nearly all later dictionary entries are derivative of that single authority rather than independent analysis.
Second, the concept is closely bound to the broader and better-documented law of purveyance. Purveyance — the Crown's right to compel sale or provision of goods at below-market rates — was a persistent grievance in English constitutional history, repeatedly contested by Parliament and formally abolished by statute in 1660 (12 Car. II, c. 24). Fodertorium, as a customary render to purveyors, belongs to that abolished regime. Any modern legal proceeding involving this term would be extraordinary and almost certainly concerned with historical title or manorial custom rather than an operative legal obligation.
Third, researchers working with medieval land records, manorial surveys, pipe rolls, or treatises on copyhold and customary tenure may encounter fodertorium or cognate terms (fodrum, foderum) in Latin text. The English dictionary glosses are thin; for substantive analysis of the obligation, sources in medieval Latin legal history and Domesday scholarship will be more productive than common law dictionaries.
Fourth, note that Rapalje & Lawrence's entry runs fodertorium together with a separate entry for FEDUS (a league or compact) without clear visual separation, which can create textual confusion when reading that source. FEDUS is an unrelated term appearing in Bouvier independently.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries converge on a single, brief definition: provisions owed by custom to the royal purveyors. The formulation is nearly identical across Black's first and second editions and Rapalje & Lawrence, reflecting their shared dependence on Cowell rather than independent investigation. None of the sources elaborates on what kinds of provisions were covered, how the customary obligation was established or varied by locality, or how disputes over the render were resolved. Bouvier does not carry a fodertorium entry at all, instead placing the immediately following term FEDUS (a league or compact) in the same alphabetical space — a reminder that historical dictionaries organized entries by physical proximity on the page, and researchers scanning Bouvier for feudal renders will not find substantive treatment here.
The thinness of the historical record in these dictionaries is itself informative: fodertorium had fallen so far out of operative use by the time Blackstone's era began that even encyclopedic compilers like Bouvier saw no need to include it. Cowell's Interpreter remains the primary legal-glossary source; for deeper treatment, Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum (posthumously published, 1664) covers cognate feudal terminology in greater depth.
Jurisdictional Note
Fodertorium is a term of English feudal law and has no recognized counterpart in American legal history. Colonial American law inherited English common law but not the prerogative right of purveyance, which had been abolished before most colonies achieved legal maturity. No American jurisdiction recognizes fodertorium as an operative concept.