Definition
Nova customa (Latin: "new custom") was a medieval English customs duty imposed on goods exported or imported by foreign merchants, as distinguished from the older and lighter duties borne by native English merchants. The term refers specifically to additional impositions levied beyond the ancient established rates — duties that were "new" relative to the antiqua custuma, the longstanding schedule of customs charges. In practical effect, nova customa functioned as a surcharge applied to alien merchants trading in England, making it both a revenue instrument and a tool of commercial regulation that disadvantaged foreign traders relative to English subjects.
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Common Confusion
NOVA CUSTOMA vs. ANTIQUA CUSTUMA: These two terms are mirror concepts and must be read together. Antiqua custuma (also called the Great or Ancient Custom) designated the original, lower schedule of export duties established in the late thirteenth century, payable primarily by English denizens. Nova customa designated the higher, later-imposed duties applicable chiefly to alien merchants. A researcher encountering either term in a historical source who does not cross-check the other risks misreading the applicable rate, the merchant's status, or the scope of a Crown grant or exemption. Historical sources sometimes use custuma nova loosely to describe any new impost, which can create further confusion in non-customs contexts.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is an archival and medieval legal history term, not a term of current positive law. Researchers are most likely to encounter nova customa in:
— Records of English Crown revenue and parliamentary taxation from roughly the late thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, particularly in exchequer rolls, port books, and enrolled customs accounts.
— Grants, charters, and letters patent in which merchants or trading companies sought exemption from nova customa or negotiated preferential rates.
— Treatises and law dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that catalogued historical fiscal instruments as background to arguments about the Crown's prerogative power to levy impositions — a constitutionally charged question in early Stuart England.
The principal research trap is anachronism: the word "custom" in modern English has shed its fiscal meaning almost entirely. A researcher reading nova customa in a primary source who does not recognize it as a technical customs duty term may misread it as referring to a commercial usage or mercantile practice. The secondary trap is conflating the term with "impositions" more broadly. In the Stuart-era constitutional debates (most prominently in Bate's Case and the subsequent parliamentary controversies), the Crown's power to levy new impositions was fiercely contested; nova customa and related medieval precedents were invoked on both sides of that argument, giving the term continued relevance in seventeenth-century legal and parliamentary records long after its original medieval context had faded.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should note that entries in the historical dictionaries are sparse. Both Bouvier and Rapalje & Lawrence treat nova customa as a brief cross-reference rather than a substantive entry, which signals that by the nineteenth century the term had fully retreated to antiquarian usage. For substantive treatment, the corpus researcher should look to primary sources and institutional histories of English customs law rather than relying on dictionary definitions alone.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both Rapalje & Lawrence and Bouvier's Law Dictionary provide only skeletal definitions. Rapalje & Lawrence describe nova customa as "an imposition or duty" and direct the reader to antiqua custuma, effectively treating the term as a relational concept rather than a standalone one. Bouvier reduces the entry to the single phrase "an imposition," offering no further context. Neither source addresses the alien-merchant dimension, the constitutional significance of the term in seventeenth-century debates, or the distinction between the various grades of medieval customs duty. The sparseness is itself informative: by the mid-nineteenth century, both dictionaries were oriented toward practicing American lawyers, for whom medieval English customs law had no operational relevance. Researchers relying solely on these sources will have the bare minimum needed to recognize the term and nothing more. For depth, earlier English legal antiquaries and exchequer scholarship provide substantially richer treatment.
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Jurisdictional Note
Nova customa is exclusively a term of English legal and fiscal history. It has no equivalent, successor, or analog in American law. Researchers encountering the term in American legal materials are almost certainly reading a historical survey, a treatise citing English precedent, or a document concerning pre-Revolutionary colonial trade regulation that traces its lineage to English customs frameworks.
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