Definition
In Scots law, outsucken multures (also written "out-sucken multures" or "out-town multures") are the tolls or duties in kind — typically a proportion of grain — paid to a mill owner by persons who grind their corn at a mill to which they are not astricted or bound by tenure. Unlike insucken multures, which are owed by tenants legally obligated to use a specific mill (a relationship called thirlage), outsucken multures arise from a voluntary transaction: the grinder chooses the mill freely and pays an agreed or customary toll for the privilege. Because no legal compulsion exists, the rate of outsucken multures was generally lower than the rate imposed on thirled tenants.
Common Confusion
OUTSUCKEN MULTURES vs. INSUCKEN MULTURES: The distinction is fundamental to Scots mill law. Insucken multures are owed as a matter of legal obligation by tenants astricted to a particular mill under the doctrine of thirlage — they had no choice of mill and owed multures as a condition of tenure or grant. Outsucken multures are paid by those under no such compulsion. The confusion arises because both involve the same physical payment (a share of ground corn) and the same word "multures," but the legal basis, the rate, and the enforceability differ entirely. Researchers finding the term "multures" alone in a historical document must establish whether the payer was thirled before characterizing the obligation.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a term of Scots legal history and will appear in documents predating the abolition of thirlage in the early nineteenth century (Thirlage Abolition Act 1799, 39 Geo. III c. 55 effectively ended compulsory thirlage in Scotland, though transitional disputes persisted). Researchers working with Scottish estate records, feudal grants, tacks, or mill leases from the seventeenth or eighteenth century need to distinguish outsucken from insucken multures to assess whether a recorded payment reflects a contractual toll or a feudal obligation running with land.
The term will rarely appear in English, Irish, or American legal sources — any appearance in non-Scottish records should be treated as a transplanted Scots usage and read with caution. Because the underlying institution of thirlage was abolished, modern Scots law does not recognize these categories in operative form; the terms are effectively archival.
Corpus researchers should note that "multures" standing alone is the broader genus and appears more frequently than the qualified forms. When outsucken multures are mentioned, the companion term insucken will almost always be conceptually present even if not expressly stated. Forbes' Institutes (cited by Black's and Burrill's) and Bell's Dictionary are the two principal reference anchors in the historical sources; researchers needing depth beyond dictionary entries should look to those works directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries show strong agreement on substance with only minor variation in framing. Black's (both editions) and Burrill's align closely, each identifying the payment as duties or tolls paid by persons voluntarily grinding at a mill to which they are not thirled or bound by tenure, and each citing Forbes' Institutes as authority. Rapalje & Lawrence and Bouvier's frame the payment as "quantities of corn" rather than "duties or tolls," which reflects the in-kind nature of the payment more concretely but is not a substantive divergence — multures were typically rendered as a share of the grain ground rather than as a money payment.
Burrill's is alone in adding Bell's Dictionary as a secondary citation alongside Forbes, which is useful confirmation that the term was treated as a settled category in Scottish institutional writing.
None of the dictionaries elaborate on the rate of outsucken multures relative to insucken multures, nor do they address the transitional legal period after the 1799 abolition. Researchers should not assume the dictionaries' present-tense framing reflects operative law at the time of their publication — by the mid-nineteenth century, when these dictionaries were compiled, thirlage and its associated multures were already historical.
Jurisdictional Note
Outsucken multures are a term of Scots law exclusively. The institution of thirlage, which gives the term its meaning, did not exist in English common law, and the term has no recognized counterpart in American, Irish, or civilian jurisdictions. Any researcher outside Scottish legal history who encounters this term should treat it as a Scots feudal technicality requiring specialized reference.