Definition
A pledge or security interest given to guarantee performance of an obligation. In historical common law, gage referred to the delivery of a chattel or other property into the creditor's possession as security for a debt or promise, with the property subject to forfeiture upon nonperformance. The term functioned as a broad ancestor to what modern law divides into the mortgage (transfer of title as security) and the pledge (transfer of possession as security).
Gage appears in historical legal texts primarily in two contexts:
1. SECURITY / PLEDGE: Property delivered or committed as surety for the performance of an act or the payment of a debt. The Latin equivalent is vadium; the French is gage. The old law phrase "by gage and pledge" (par gage et plegge) indicated the giving of both a security deposit and a personal surety.
2. CHALLENGE TO COMBAT: In feudal and early common law procedure, a material object — typically a glove or cap — thrown down as a formal challenge to trial by combat. Acceptance of the gage by the other party signified acceptance of the challenge. This procedural use is obsolete.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An alternative spelling of gauge — a measuring instrument or standard of measurement.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A pledge or pawn given as security for an act, forfeited upon nonperformance; also a glove or similar object cast down as a challenge to combat.
The modern common meaning (a measurement device) has no connection to the legal meaning. Researchers encountering "gage" in historical legal sources must resist the reflex toward the modern spelling variant of "gauge." In legal texts, gage is consistently a security or pledge concept, not a measurement concept. The Webster's 1913 definition is, in this instance, the better guide to historical legal usage.
Common Confusion
GAGE vs. PLEDGE vs. MORTGAGE: These three terms describe overlapping but distinct security arrangements, and historical sources often use them loosely or interchangeably. A gage, in its broadest historical sense, encompasses both the pledge (transfer of possession to the creditor, who retains the thing until the debt is paid) and the mortgage (transfer of title to the creditor, defeasible upon payment). Modern law reserves "pledge" for possessory security interests and "mortgage" for title or lien-based security over real or personal property. Bouvier's treatment clarifies that a chattel mortgage transfers title while a pledge does not — a distinction that historical uses of "gage" tend to collapse.
GAGE vs. GAUGE: No legal relationship. The spelling convergence in modern English creates a false connection that does not exist in legal doctrine.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century common law materials will encounter "gage" frequently in security law, property law, and procedural contexts, often without clear signal as to which sense is intended. Several navigational points:
INDEXING GAPS: Anderson's Dictionary of Law dispenses with independent treatment entirely, redirecting to MORTGAGE. This is editorially defensible but means that researchers relying solely on Anderson's will miss the procedural (challenge to combat) usage and the broader historical scope of the term.
LATIN AND FRENCH VARIANTS: Burrill links gage to the Latin vadium and the French gage/gager. Corpus searches in Law Mind for medieval and early modern materials should account for all three forms. Vadium in particular appears in land law contexts (vadium vivum, vadium mortuum — living gage and dead gage), which are the direct antecedents of the mortgage concept.
LIVING GAGE vs. DEAD GAGE: A critical historical subdivision that Law Mind researchers will encounter in real property sources. In a vivum vadium (living gage), the creditor took possession of the land and applied its profits toward discharge of the debt, so the gage "lived" by paying itself off. In a mortuum vadium (dead gage, or mortgage), the profits did not reduce the debt — the gage was "dead" to the debtor. The word "mortgage" itself derives from this dead gage concept.
PROCEDURAL USAGE: The combat-challenge sense of gage appears in early plea rolls, Year Books, and treatises on common law procedure. It is effectively extinct after the formal abolition of trial by battle in England (1819) but will surface in historical procedural sources without explanation.
JURISDICTIONAL VARIATION: American sources largely absorbed gage into mortgage and pledge doctrine without preserving the terminology. Researchers in American materials from the colonial and early national period may encounter it, but by the mid-nineteenth century it is largely antiquarian in American legal writing.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the most substantive treatment, correctly identifying gage as deriving from the French gager and the Latin vadium, and situating it as a general security concept in old English law. Burrill's connection of gage to the phrase par gage et plegge is useful for corpus researchers encountering that formula in historical pleading materials.
Bouvier does not treat gage as a standalone entry in the excerpted material, instead addressing the adjacent concepts of chattel mortgage and pledge. Bouvier's distinction between mortgage (transfer of title) and pledge (transfer of possession without title) is the clearest statement of where gage doctrine eventually resolved in American law.
Anderson's cross-reference to MORTGAGE, while terse, signals the direction American legal writing took: gage as an independent term was absorbed and retired, with mortgage and pledge doing the work.
Rapalje & Lawrence does not appear to treat gage directly in the excerpted material.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: the vivum vadium / mortuum vadium distinction, which is essential context for understanding how gage functioned in land law and how the mortgage concept emerged from it. Researchers needing that history should turn to Coke on Littleton and Blackstone's Commentaries rather than the dictionary sources alone.
Jurisdictional Note
The term "gage" as an operative legal concept is largely obsolete in American and English jurisdictions, having been subsumed by mortgage and pledge doctrine. It retains significance as a historical term in property and secured transactions research. Researchers in civil law or mixed jurisdictions may encounter analogous but not identical concepts under different terminology.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Mortgage — History and Development; Pledge and Possessory Security Interests; Trial by Battle (Procedural History)