Definition
A variant spelling of FORESTALL. In historical English law, forstal referred to the act of intercepting goods or travelers on the highway — specifically, the practice of meeting merchants before they reached a public market in order to buy up goods and resell them at inflated prices. The term encompasses both the act itself and the place or roadway where such interception occurred. As a common-law offense, forstal (forestalling) was treated as a serious economic crime against the public order.
Common Confusion
FORSTAL, FORESTALL, ENGROSSING, REGRATING: These terms describe overlapping but historically distinct market offenses. Forestalling (forstal) meant intercepting goods before they reached market. Engrossing meant buying up large quantities of goods already in the market to create a monopoly. Regrating meant buying goods at market and reselling them at a profit in the same or a nearby market. Researchers encountering any one of these terms in historical sources should check all three offense types, as courts and commentators used them with varying degrees of precision and sometimes interchangeably.
Why It Matters in Research
FORSTAL appears in historical sources primarily as a spelling variant or root form; researchers will encounter it most often in Latin-derived legal texts, early English statutes, and glossaries where the term leads directly to FORESTALL. The practical research work is done under that headword.
The maxim quoted in both editions of Black's — Forstellarius est pauperum depressor et totius communitatis et patriæ publicus inimicus (a forestaller is an oppressor of the poor, and a public enemy of the whole community and country), attributed to Coke's Institutes (3 Inst. 196) — signals how seriously English law treated this offense through the early modern period. Researchers in economic history, early trade regulation, and the history of market law will find this maxim a useful anchor for tracing the moral and legal framing of forestalling doctrine.
Be aware that the offense of forestalling was abolished in England by statute in the nineteenth century, meaning that sources before and after abolition treat the concept differently. Pre-abolition sources frame forstal/forestalling as an active criminal offense; later sources and modern dictionaries treat it as an archaic curiosity. The Law Mind corpus will reflect both registers depending on source date.
Jurisdictional note: The offense developed in English common law and was carried into early American legal thought, but it did not survive as a criminal category in most American jurisdictions. Modern antitrust and market manipulation law addresses some of the same underlying conduct under entirely different frameworks.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries treat FORSTAL as a cross-reference only, directing researchers immediately to FORESTALL. This is consistent across Black's first and second editions and Bouvier's, indicating that by the time these dictionaries were compiled, FORSTAL was understood as a variant or archaic root rather than an independent headword carrying its own legal weight.
Bouvier adds the useful note that forstaller, forstall, forstallare, forstallment, and forstaller are all variant forms found in historical sources under the FORESTALL cluster — a signal to researchers that spelling instability in primary sources is significant and should not be treated as indicating different legal concepts.
The Latin maxim from Coke appears in both Black's editions verbatim, suggesting it was treated as a foundational articulation of the offense's rationale rather than merely decorative. Coke's framing — public enemy, oppressor of the poor — reflects the communitarian logic underlying forestalling law: the harm was not merely to individual sellers or buyers but to the market as a shared public institution.
None of the historical sources provide a standalone substantive definition for FORSTAL itself, which confirms the structural pattern: this is a variant-form entry that functions as a navigational node pointing to the primary headword.