Definition
An archaic term with several related but distinct senses drawn from old English market and maritime practice:
1. A customary toll or duty exacted at certain fairs and markets, entitling the payer to carry purchased goods away to wherever they wished. In this sense, lastage was a liberty-fee — payment secured the right of free removal of goods from the market.
2. A customs duty or toll levied on goods sold by the last — a unit of weight or measure applied to bulk commodities such as herrings, pitch, tar, and similar merchandise. The amount of the duty varied with the commodity and the market.
3. The lading, cargo, or burden of a ship; the goods with which a vessel is loaded. In this maritime sense, lastage referred to the total weight or freight stowed aboard.
4. The ballast of a ship — the material loaded to stabilize a vessel when not carrying revenue cargo, or to supplement a partial load.
5. Stowage room within a vessel; the capacity or space available for goods.
All five senses are now obsolete in active legal usage. Lastage survives only in historical legal sources, antiquarian scholarship, and the study of medieval English market and maritime law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A duty exacted at fairs or markets for the right to carry goods away; a tax on wares sold by the last; the lading or ballast of a ship; room for stowing goods aboard a vessel.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A duty exacted in some fairs or markets for the right to carry things where one will (obs.); a tax on wares sold by the last (obs.); the lading of a ship; also, ballast; room for stowing goods.
The legal and common meanings of lastage are, for practical purposes, identical — both drew from the same antiquarian sources. The distinction worth noting is that legal usage, particularly in Burrill and Bouvier, emphasized the formal status of lastage as a customary obligation enforceable at common law, whereas general dictionaries treated it as a descriptive term for a historical practice. The legal sources are the more authoritative record of what lastage meant as an enforceable right or duty.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Market lastage: The toll paid at fairs and markets for liberty of carriage. This is the most frequently cited sense in English legal sources and was likely the original meaning from which the others extended.
Commodity lastage: The duty paid on goods measured and sold by the last. Distinct from market lastage in that it attached to the unit of sale rather than to the act of removal.
Maritime lastage: The cargo, lading, ballast, or stowage capacity of a ship. Nautical dictionaries (cited in Bouvier) treat this as a separate technical usage originating in seafaring practice rather than market custom.
Why It Matters in Research
Lastage is a term a researcher will encounter almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal materials — records of fair courts, port customs rolls, grants of market privileges, and early treatises on the law of trade. Its primary research value is interpretive: when it appears in a charter, grant, or pleading, knowing which sense is intended governs the legal significance of the passage.
The market-toll sense and the maritime senses are easily conflated if a researcher reads the term without context. A grant of lastage in a market charter means something entirely different from lastage appearing in a shipping contract or port record. Burrill's emphasis on the Latin phrase onus quod navi imponitur (the burden placed upon a ship) is a useful anchor for the maritime sense; Rastell's exposition cited in Spelman and Cowell anchors the market-toll sense.
The unit-of-measure connection is also important. The last as a weight or volume measure varied by commodity and by region — a last of herrings was not the same quantity as a last of pitch. Researchers working with commodity duties in historical customs records must resolve not just the meaning of lastage but the applicable last for the commodity in question.
Lastage does not appear in modern statutory or common law contexts. If encountered in a contemporary document, it almost certainly signals quotation from, or reference to, historical materials.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree on the core senses of lastage but differ in emphasis and in which sense they treat as primary.
Black's (both editions) and Burrill lead with the market-toll meaning — the custom exacted at fairs to carry things away — then acknowledge the maritime meanings as secondary. Burrill adds the Latin gloss from Spelman (onus quod navi imponitur) and notes Cowell's equation of lastage with ballast specifically, distinguishing it from the broader lading sense.
Bouvier is the most comprehensive, treating all senses with roughly equal weight and adding the stowage-room meaning drawn from Young's Nautical Dictionary — a source the other dictionaries do not cite. Bouvier's entry is therefore the most useful single reference for researchers encountering lastage in maritime contexts.
The first entry in Black's (1st ed.) source material — referencing the customary law of Spanish provinces and Roman law — is clearly a misplaced excerpt from a different entry and has no bearing on lastage. Researchers consulting digitized or OCR-processed versions of Black's should be aware that such interpolations can appear in older dictionary scans.
None of the historical dictionaries situate lastage within a broader taxonomy of medieval market customs or connect it systematically to related tolls such as stallage, piccage, or toll traverse. Researchers will need to look beyond the dictionary shelf to understand the practical legal context in which lastage operated.
Jurisdictional Note
Lastage was a creature of English customary law and appears primarily in English legal materials. It has no recognized analogue in Scots, civil law, or American legal traditions. Researchers working with early American port or market records may encounter the term in documents derived from English precedents, but it carried no independent legal force in colonial or post-independence American law.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Medieval Market Customs
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Maritime Cargo and Stowage