Definition
A gold coin of Portugal historically valued at twenty-seven English shillings. The moidore circulated widely during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and appears in legal instruments, probate inventories, commercial contracts, and pleadings of that era where debts or valuations were denominated in foreign specie. It is not a unit of modern currency and carries no present monetary force; its significance in legal research is purely historical and interpretive.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An old Portuguese gold coin, minted from 1640 to 1732.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A gold coin of Portugal, valued at about 27s. sterling.
The common and legal definitions are essentially identical in substance. The sole distinction worth noting for legal researchers is one of function: in ordinary historical usage the moidore is a numismatic or commercial artifact, while in legal instruments it operates as a unit of valuation that courts and administrators were sometimes called upon to convert into sterling or local currency equivalents when construing or enforcing obligations.
Why It Matters in Research
The moidore surfaces almost exclusively in historical legal materials — colonial-era probate records, shipping contracts, prize court proceedings, and debt pleadings from roughly 1650 to the mid-eighteenth century. Researchers working in those corpora need to recognize the term quickly and know its sterling equivalent (twenty-seven shillings) to interpret the economic scale of a transaction or bequest accurately.
Several practical traps arise. First, foreign coin names were frequently anglicized or misspelled in manuscript legal records; variant spellings (moidor, moidoir, moedore) may appear in the same document. Second, the valuation of foreign specie in English and colonial courts was not always fixed: statutory proclamation rates, merchant custom, and judicial discretion could produce valuations that deviated from the canonical twenty-seven shillings. A debt instrument that recites moidores does not automatically resolve to a fixed sterling sum without consulting the applicable proclamation or local currency ordinance in force at the time of execution. Third, researchers using full-text search in historical corpora should run multiple spelling variants; indexers and transcribers of early records were not consistent.
The moidore also appears in prize law contexts, where captured Portuguese specie had to be appraised and distributed. Admiralty inventories listing foreign coins by name and imputed value are a common source type.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence — are in complete agreement: a Portuguese gold coin worth twenty-seven English shillings. No source offers elaboration on legal context, variant spellings, or the coin's behavior in pleadings and instruments. This convergence reflects the term's narrow, purely referential status in legal lexicography; it was included in law dictionaries because it appeared in legal documents, not because it carried doctrinal content.
What the historical dictionaries miss entirely is any guidance on conversion disputes, on the proclamation-rate framework that governed foreign specie valuation in English and colonial courts, or on the documentary contexts in which a researcher is actually likely to encounter the term. For that surrounding framework, researchers should consult historical treatises on mercantile law and the relevant colonial currency acts rather than the dictionary entries alone.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry trails off into the beginning of the next entry (MOIETY), which is unrelated; no additional moidore content is present in that source beyond the standard definition.
Jurisdictional Note
The moidore was recognized as a unit of value across English, colonial American, and Caribbean legal contexts during the period of its active circulation. Its sterling valuation of twenty-seven shillings was the standard English reference point, but colonial legislatures and governors sometimes set different local proclamation rates for foreign specie. Researchers working in colonial American records should verify the applicable provincial currency act rather than assuming the English rate governs.