Definition
A feudal tribute or duty payable to the king's foresters, historically owed in connection with the use of royal forest land. The obligation arose from the crown's exclusive jurisdiction over royal forests and represented compensation or acknowledgment owed to the officers charged with administering and protecting those forests. As a form of feudal revenue incident to forest law, forestage belongs to the broader category of dues and services tied to land tenure within designated royal forest boundaries.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The part of a theatre stage in front of the closed curtain; a preliminary or developmental stage; or, archaically, a forecastle on a ship.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A duty or tribute payable to the king's foresters; a service paid by foresters to the king.
Notably, Webster's 1913 tracks the legal meaning almost exactly, reflecting how thoroughly the term was rooted in legal and administrative usage rather than general vocabulary. The modern common meaning — referring to the front portion of a theatrical stage — has no connection whatsoever to the legal sense. Researchers encountering "forestage" in general modern sources should not assume any legal content.
Common Confusion
FORESTAGE should not be confused with PURVEYANCE, CHIMINAGE, or PANNAGE, which are distinct feudal exactions also connected to forest use. Chiminage was a toll for passage through a forest; pannage was a payment for the right to feed pigs on forest mast. Forestage was specifically tied to tribute owed to the foresters themselves as officers of the crown, rather than to a right of use by the payer. The term should also be distinguished from FOREST COURTS and FOREST LAW more broadly — forestage was a specific revenue obligation, not a jurisdictional concept.
Why It Matters in Research
Forestage is a narrow, archaic term appearing almost exclusively in sources dealing with English medieval forest law and feudal tenure. Researchers will encounter it chiefly when working with treatises on the forest system, manorial records, or sources discussing the administrative apparatus of the royal forests. Black's cites Cowell (John Cowell's Interpreter, 1607) as its authority, making that work a critical primary source for further investigation.
The term is effectively obsolete as an operative legal concept — royal forest administration in the English sense did not transplant to American law, and the specific office of royal forester ceased to carry legal significance after the decline of the forest system in England. Researchers working in American legal sources will not find forestage in any operative context.
When reviewing historical English sources, be alert to the varied spelling of forest-related dues; some manuscripts and early printed works use inconsistent terminology. The overlap between "forestage" and neighboring obligations (pannage, cheminage, agistment) can make it difficult to determine exactly which duty a given historical record describes without close contextual reading.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary preserves the definition with minimal elaboration, defining forestage as a duty or tribute payable to the king's foresters and citing Cowell. Webster's 1913 reproduces the same definition almost verbatim, indicating that by the late nineteenth century the term had no living legal application and survived only as historical vocabulary. Neither source provides detail about how the obligation was calculated, when it fell due, or what conduct triggered it — gaps that reflect the term's marginality even in the historical dictionaries of that era.
Cowell's Interpreter remains the most substantive historical source specifically cited in connection with this term. Researchers needing more than a bare definition should consult treatments of English forest law, including historical accounts of the forest eyre and the administrative structure of royal forests, where forestage appears as one item among many obligations tied to forest tenure.
Jurisdictional Note
Forestage is a concept of English medieval law with no recognized counterpart in American, Canadian, or other common law jurisdictions. It has no operative legal significance outside of historical research into English forest administration and feudal tenure.