Definition
A sum of money paid as a premium or fine upon the grant or renewal of a lease, used in old English law. The grossome was a lump-sum payment made at the outset of a leasehold arrangement, distinct from the ongoing rent obligation. It functioned as an entry fine — consideration paid to the lessor in exchange for the privilege of obtaining the lease — and was a recognized feature of English feudal and copyhold land tenure.
Common Confusion
Grossome, gressume, and gersuma are variant forms of the same term and should not be treated as distinct legal concepts. The orthographic differences reflect centuries of phonetic drift from Anglo-Saxon through Norman French into early modern English legal writing. Black's and Burrill both cross-reference gressume explicitly. Researchers should search for all three forms when working across sources from different periods.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources and is essentially obsolete in contemporary practice. Researchers encountering it in historical conveyancing documents, manorial records, or early English case reports should understand that it signals a premium payment at lease inception, not a recurring rent. The term's importance lies in distinguishing it from annual rent obligations when reconstructing the financial terms of historical leaseholds.
The references to Plowden's Commentaries (Plowd. 270–271, 285) point to one of the most authoritative Tudor-era legal reporters; those folios are the primary source connecting grossome to practice. Researchers working in manorial court records or copyhold tenure disputes may also encounter the variant spellings gressume and gersuma — all referring to the same concept at different stages of linguistic drift. Failure to recognize these variants as synonyms can produce apparent gaps or contradictions in a document trail.
The term also appears in Cowell's Interpreter, an early seventeenth-century legal glossary that Law Mind researchers may consult for period-accurate definitions of archaic tenure vocabulary.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core definition: a fine or sum of money paid upon obtaining a lease. The agreement is essentially verbatim, reflecting shared reliance on the Plowden citation as the authoritative source.
Burrill and Black's 2nd Ed. add the most useful philological note, identifying grossome as a probable corruption of gersuma — the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman term for a premium or fine paid to a lord. Bouvier independently confirms the same etymology, spelling the root form as gersum. This convergence across dictionaries makes the corruption history reliable, not speculative.
None of the four dictionaries elaborate on the practical mechanics of how grossomes were calculated, whether they were negotiable, or how disputes over them were resolved — gaps that Plowden's underlying reports would need to fill. Researchers should not expect the dictionary entries to substitute for the primary source.
Jurisdictional Note
Grossome is a term of English law with no meaningful counterpart in American legal practice. It appears in American legal dictionaries solely for historical completeness. Researchers working in colonial American land records may occasionally encounter analogous entry-fine concepts derived from English tenure practice, but the term grossome itself is unlikely to appear outside English sources.