Definition
A toll or fee paid to the lord of a fair or market for goods sold within the common hall of that place. Hallage was a revenue right incident to the ownership or governance of a market, fair, or trading hall, entitling the lord or proprietor to exact a charge from vendors as a condition of conducting sales on the premises. The fee was not a general market toll but specifically attached to transactions occurring inside a designated hall structure. In its most particular application, the term referred to the fee levied on cloth merchants bringing goods for sale to Blackwell Hall in London, the principal cloth market of medieval and early modern England.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A fee or toll paid for selling goods in a hall.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A fee or toll paid for goods sold in a hall.
The common and legal definitions are unusually close for a historical legal term, but the legal sources add a layer the common definitions omit: hallage was a right belonging to a specific person — the lord of the fair or market — not merely a generic transactional charge. The legal significance lies in who held the entitlement and under what authority, not simply that a fee was paid.
Why It Matters in Research
Hallage is an archaic term encountered almost exclusively in historical English legal materials — manorial records, market charters, treatises on customary dues, and early common law reports. Researchers are unlikely to find it in modern case law or statute, but it surfaces in two contexts: (1) historical inquiries into manorial rights, market franchises, and the legal incidents of lordship over fairs, and (2) research into the wool and cloth trade, particularly involving Blackwell Hall in London.
The Blackwell Hall connection is the most practically specific thread. Bouvier cites 6 Co. 62 (Coke's Reports) in relation to hallage, placing the concept within the orbit of early common law franchise doctrine. Researchers tracing the legal basis of market rights, the nature of toll collection authority, or the history of regulated trading spaces should treat hallage as a gateway term into the broader cluster of market franchise rights — stallage, piccage, and lastage — which typically appear together in the same historical sources.
Be alert to the fact that historical dictionaries use the term without distinguishing between hallage as a customary manorial right and hallage as a specifically chartered or statutory toll. The distinction matters when assessing whether a historical lord's claim to hallage rested on prescription, royal grant, or local custom.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries are in close agreement: hallage is a toll for goods vended in a hall, due to the lord of a fair or market. Black's (both editions) and Burrill track each other almost verbatim, drawing on Jacob's law dictionary. Bouvier adds the most substantive detail, identifying the Blackwell Hall application specifically and citing Coke's Reports (6 Rep. 62) — the only primary legal source reference among the shelf dictionaries for this term.
None of the historical dictionaries engage with the legal mechanics of how hallage was established, transferred, or enforced, nor do they address whether it required royal franchise or could arise by custom alone. Researchers should not treat the dictionary entries as dispositive on those questions. The dictionaries function here as terminological anchors, not analytical treatments. Cowell's Interpreter and Blount's Law Dictionary, cited by the shelf sources, are the appropriate next stops for fuller historical elaboration.
Jurisdictional Note
Hallage is a term of English law with no recognized counterpart in American common law. It does not appear in U.S. statutory or case law as a live legal concept. Researchers working in American legal history will encounter it only when tracing the English antecedents of market regulation or property rights derived from English manorial custom.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Market Rights
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Manorial Dues
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Blackwell Hall (if available)