Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning freight money — specifically, a payment made for the carriage of goods or money by sea. The term denotes the charge or hire due to a shipmaster or carrier in exchange for transporting a cargo. It is functionally equivalent to what modern law and commerce call freight or freight charges.
Common Confusion
Rapalje & Lawrence note that FRETUM (without the doubled t) is a distinct Latin term meaning a strait — that is, a narrow body of water connecting two larger bodies. The two spellings appear in historical sources and are occasionally conflated. Researchers encountering either form in medieval or early modern English records should distinguish carefully: FRETTUM concerns a contractual or financial obligation arising from carriage, while FRETUM is a geographical or jurisdictional term. The confusion is compounded by the fact that both terms arise naturally in maritime contexts.
Why It Matters in Research
FRETTUM is an archaic Latin term of art confined almost entirely to medieval and early modern English legal records. Researchers are unlikely to encounter it outside of close rolls, admiralty records, and the older treatise literature that draws on those sources. Burrill's citation to the Rotuli Clausarum (Close Rolls) of the 17th year of King John places the term squarely in thirteenth-century royal administrative records, suggesting it was used in formal instruments recording payments or obligations connected to maritime carriage.
The term has no meaningful life in modern law. It does not appear in contemporary shipping contracts, admiralty pleadings, or statutory frameworks, all of which use freight or freight charges without Latin formulation. Its research value is therefore almost entirely historical: understanding what obligation a medieval document was recording when it used FRETTUM, and connecting that obligation to the broader law of carriage and hire as it developed through the English common law and admiralty traditions.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should treat FRETTUM as a pointer toward the freight and carriage concepts that later became systematized in English mercantile and admiralty law. A document using this term is recording a commercial relationship — hire for carriage — that carries with it questions about the conditions of payment, the rights of the carrier on non-delivery, and the liabilities of the shipper. Those downstream questions are addressed under modern freight and charter-party doctrine, not under this term itself.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three historical sources agree on the core meaning — freight money, or the payment for maritime carriage — but they bring varying levels of documentary support. Burrill's is the most rigorous, anchoring the definition to a specific entry in the Close Rolls (Rot. Claus. 17 Johan. m. 16) and identifying the term as belonging to old English law Latin. Rapalje & Lawrence attribute the definition to Cowell, meaning John Cowell's Interpreter (1607), an early English legal dictionary, without independently verifying the primary source. Bouvier's entry is the most abbreviated, offering only "Freight" with a cross-reference to Mozley and Whiteley's law dictionary — useful as a quick equivalence but adding nothing analytically.
None of the three sources discuss the legal incidents of the freight obligation itself, the remedies available for non-payment, or the relationship of FRETTUM to the developing law of charter-parties and bills of lading. Researchers who need that doctrinal context must look beyond these dictionary entries to treatises on admiralty and the law of carriage.
Jurisdictional Note
FRETTUM is specific to old English legal practice and the Latin administrative tradition of the English royal courts and chancery. It has no recognized equivalent or usage in Scots law, civil law jurisdictions, or American law. Research use is confined to English medieval and early modern primary sources.