Definition
A toll or fee charged for the official weighing of avoirdupois goods — that is, goods sold by weight under the standard avoirdupois system — excluding wool. In English commercial practice, pesage was levied at markets, fairs, and ports where public weighing facilities were provided and regulated by local or royal authority. The right to collect pesage was typically granted by royal charter to a lord, municipality, or other franchisee in exchange for maintaining accurate public scales and supervising the weighing of merchandise.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A fee or toll paid for the weighing of merchandise.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A fee, or toll, paid for the weighing of merchandise.
The common usage definitions are essentially accurate as far as they go, but strip away the legal precision that matters in historical research. Legally, pesage applied specifically to avoirdupois goods and expressly excluded wool, which was subject to a separate toll regime in England. The common definitions give no indication of this exclusion, which is the operative legal boundary for the term.
Common Confusion
Pesage is one of several related market tolls that researchers encounter in medieval and early modern English sources and that are easily conflated:
- Tronage was the analogous toll for weighing wool specifically — the category pesage excludes.
- Lastage was a toll on goods transported or sold by the last (a measure of volume or bulk), not by weight.
- Passage was a transit toll unrelated to weighing.
In older records, these terms sometimes appear together in the same charter or market grant, and distinguishing them is essential to understanding the scope of a franchise or the nature of a commercial dispute.
Why It Matters in Research
Pesage is an archaic term of English fiscal and commercial law. Researchers will encounter it primarily in three contexts: (1) medieval and early modern royal charters granting market or fair privileges; (2) historical treatises and digests on commercial law, particularly those dealing with tolls, duties, and the law of markets; and (3) cases or administrative records involving the rights and obligations of toll franchisees.
The explicit exclusion of wool is the critical legal detail. Wool trade in medieval England was subject to intensive and separate royal regulation, including the staple system, and its weighing tolls were governed under distinct legal frameworks. A researcher who misreads pesage as a general weighing toll covering all commodities will mischaracterize the scope of a franchise grant or dispute.
Because pesage was franchise-based, its collection depended on valid grant of authority. Disputes over pesage rights would implicate the law of market franchises, royal prerogative, and the conditions under which tolls could lawfully be exacted. Researchers working in these areas should be alert to pesage appearing alongside tronage and other named tolls in the same instruments.
The term is essentially obsolete in modern commercial law. Its research value is historical and contextual — understanding the structure of English market regulation before the consolidation of modern commercial and customs law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement on this term, all three citing the same source: 2 Chitty, Commercial Law, page 16. The uniformity across all three dictionaries reflects the narrow, well-settled nature of the term within English legal history — there was no ambiguity to resolve and no American jurisdictional adaptation to make. The citation to Chitty is reliable and consistent; Joseph Chitty's treatise on commercial law was a standard reference in nineteenth-century Anglo-American legal practice.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the procedural and franchise law surrounding the right to collect pesage, the mechanism by which such rights were granted and enforced, or how pesage interacted with the broader medieval English toll and market system. Researchers needing that depth must go beyond the dictionary entries to primary sources and specialized historical scholarship on English market law.
Jurisdictional Note
Pesage is a term of English law with no established American legal equivalent or reception. It does not appear in American statutory or common law as an operative concept. Researchers in U.S. jurisdictions will encounter it only in comparative, historical, or treatise contexts.