Definition
Pannage is a customary right of common entitling the holder to feed swine on mast — acorns, beechnuts, and similar forest produce — in a commonable wood or forest during a designated season, typically autumn when the mast falls. The term carries two distinct but related senses:
1. The right itself (common of pannage): The legal entitlement, appurtenant to a tenement or held by custom, to drive pigs into a lord's or common wood to forage on fallen mast during the pannage season.
2. The payment (pannagium as toll or render): A toll or customary payment made to the lord of the forest or wood in exchange for the privilege of exercising that right. The payment could take the form of money or, historically, a portion of the pigs themselves.
The classic Latin formulation from the sources states: Pannagium est pastus porcorum, in nemoribus et in silvis, ut puta, de glandibus, etc. — "Pannage is the pasture of hogs in woods and forests, upon acorns, and so forth."
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Acorns and beech mast used as forage for pigs; the feeding of pigs on such mast in the woods; the right to do so; or a tax formerly paid for feeding swine in the woods.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The food of swine in the woods, as beechnuts, acorns, etc. A tax paid for the privilege of feeding swine in the woods."
The common usage definitions track the legal meaning relatively closely, but they flatten a distinction that matters in legal research: the word pannage in legal sources can describe either the right (a property interest appurtenant to land) or the payment (a seigniorial toll or render). Treating pannage merely as "pig food" or "a tax" misses its primary legal significance as a recognized form of common — a property right that could be granted, held, extinguished, and litigated.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Common of pannage: The right of common permitting a defined number of swine to forage in a wood or forest during the pannage season. Like other commons appurtenant, it attached to a dominant tenement and was exercised only within prescribed times and subject to the servient owner's right to the soil.
Pannage as toll or render: A customary payment owed to the forest lord or manorial lord for permission to exercise the privilege. Could be fixed by custom as a per-head charge on pigs driven into the wood, or as an annual sum.
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Why It Matters in Research
Pannage is a minor but telling term for researchers navigating medieval and early modern property law, forest law, and manorial records. Several points of navigational importance:
First, context determines meaning. In a grant, custumal, or plea, pannage may refer to the right being conveyed or confirmed, or to the payment being reserved or claimed. A researcher encountering the word in a forest eyre roll is likely dealing with enforcement of toll obligations; in a deed or inquisition, it is more likely a right being described. Conflating the two can lead to misreading the nature of the legal relationship.
Second, pannage sits within a larger system of forest and common rights — including estovers, turbary, piscary, and common of pasture — that were progressively restricted and then largely extinguished in England through enclosure, statute, and disforestation. Researchers tracing property rights in woodland parishes should understand that pannage, unlike common of pasture, was inherently seasonal and subject to the forester's or lord's control over the timing of the swine drive.
Third, historical dictionaries handle the term unevenly. The Bulstrode citation (1 Bulst. 7) appearing in both Black's editions is a genuine seventeenth-century English law report reference and indicates that pannage was litigated in the common law courts, not merely a matter of manorial custom. Researchers should not assume the term is purely antiquarian; it could surface in early chancery proceedings or common law cases involving forest rights.
Fourth, the pannage season — roughly Michaelmas to Martinmas in English practice (late September to mid-November) — was a fixed customary window. This seasonal limitation distinguishes pannage from year-round grazing rights and is frequently specified in historical grants. Failure to appreciate this temporal element can cause misreading of whether a right was being observed or violated in a given set of records.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's editions offer materially identical entries, quoting the same Latin maxim from 1 Bulstrode 7 and citing Elton on Commons and Williams on Common as the primary secondary authorities. Neither edition distinguishes clearly between pannage as right and pannage as payment, treating them as aspects of a single concept rather than legally distinct interests. This conflation is understandable given the brevity of the entries but can mislead researchers expecting precision.
Webster's 1913 adds useful texture in identifying mast (beechnuts, acorns) as the specific forage, and in foregrounding the tax dimension. Wiktionary's layered definition — separating the food, the practice, the right, and the payment — is actually more analytically useful than the legal dictionary entries for orientation purposes, though it does not address the legal mechanics of how the right was held or enforced.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the distinction between pannage appurtenant (attached to a tenement) and pannage in gross; the role of forest courts and the regard in policing pannage obligations; or the eventual fate of the right under English law. Researchers needing depth on those questions must go beyond the shelf dictionaries to treatises on forest law and commons, including Elton's Commons and Williams's Rights of Common, both cited in the Black's entries.
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Jurisdictional Note
Pannage is primarily a doctrine of English common law and has no meaningful independent existence in American law. It may appear in early colonial grants derived from English crown patents, or in historical deeds in heavily forested eastern regions, but it was not transplanted as an operative legal institution in the United States. Researchers encountering the term in American legal sources are almost certainly dealing with historical recitation, learned citation to English authority, or chain-of-title materials derived from English-era grants.
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