Definition
A pack of wool is a historical unit of weight and commercial measure used in the English wool trade, defined as a horse load consisting of seventeen stone and two pounds, equal to two hundred and forty pounds avoirdupois. The term functioned as a legal measure in trade regulation and customs law, establishing a standardized quantity for taxation, tariff assessment, and commercial transactions involving raw wool.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A pack is a bundle or collection of items fastened together for carrying or storage; wool is the fiber harvested from sheep or similar animals.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A pack is defined as a bundle bound together for transportation; a definite quantity used as a measure of certain commodities.
The gap here is one of precision. In ordinary language, a pack of wool suggests an indefinite bundle. In legal and commercial usage, the phrase carried a fixed and enforceable weight standard. A merchant, customs officer, or court applying the term in historical English law was not speaking loosely — the pack of wool was a specific measure with legal consequences for trade and revenue purposes.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a historical research concern. Researchers working in English legal history, customs and excise records, medieval and early modern trade law, or the history of weights and measures will encounter "pack of wool" in statutes, wool staple regulations, and customs rolls where precise quantities governed duty calculations and merchant liability.
Two practical traps arise. First, the weight standard itself was not always uniform across time and locality. The 240-pound figure cited in the dictionary sources reflects a particular formulation; researchers should not assume uniform application across all periods of English legal history without consulting the underlying source, particularly Fleta (circa 13th century) and Cowell's Interpreter. Second, the stone as a unit was itself variable depending on commodity and region — seventeen stone in a wool context does not automatically translate by modern stone equivalents without verification.
The term connects directly to English staple law and the regulation of the wool trade, one of the most heavily legislated commercial sectors in medieval and early modern England. Customs assessments on wool exports were a primary source of royal revenue, and standardized measures like the pack were the mechanism through which those assessments were made enforceable. Researchers tracing disputes over customs duties, merchant privileges, or staple town regulations should treat this term as a gateway into that statutory framework rather than an isolated definition.
No modern American legal usage survives. Researchers encountering this term in any post-colonial American source are almost certainly dealing with quotation from or reference to English authorities.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources are in close agreement. Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier all converge on the same weight figure — seventeen stone and two pounds, or 240 pounds — and all trace the definition to the same two authorities: Fleta and Cowell's Interpreter. This degree of uniformity across independent dictionary compilations suggests the definition was settled and uncontested by the time these dictionaries were compiled in the nineteenth century.
The citation to Fleta (Book 2, Chapter 12) is notable. Fleta is a Latin legal treatise of English origin, written approximately in the reign of Edward I (late 13th century), and it stands as one of the earliest sources for standardized commercial measures in English law. Cowell's Interpreter (1607) is a legal dictionary of the early modern period that transmitted many such measures from medieval sources into common legal reference. The reliance on both sources across all four dictionaries indicates this definition was transmitted rather than independently verified — researchers should consult Fleta directly for the original context if the precise historical application is at issue.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the relationship between the pack and other contemporary units such as the tod, stone, sack, or sarpler, which were also used in the wool trade and which interacted with the pack in statute and custom. A researcher needing to reconstruct a complete picture of wool measurement law will need to go beyond these dictionary entries.
Jurisdictional Note
This is a term of English law with no meaningful reception into American or other common law jurisdictions as an operative legal standard. Its relevance in non-English research contexts is limited to documents directly referencing English trade law or early colonial commercial regulation.