Definition
POLLARDS carries two distinct historical legal meanings, both now obsolete in active practice:
1. (Currency) A foreign coin of base metal, prohibited under English law from being imported into the realm under St. 27 Edw. I, c. 3. The penalty for violation was forfeiture of life and goods. Pollards were valued at two to the sterling penny — that is, worth half a penny each — reflecting their debased metallic content.
2. (Arboriculture/Property) A species or class of trees that have been lopped or cut back, as distinguished from full-standing timber trees. In property and estate law, the classification of trees as pollards versus timber trees carried legal consequence for questions of waste, inheritance, and the rights of tenants versus landowners.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "pollard" — a tree that has been cut back to the trunk to encourage dense branch growth, or an animal that has lost or shed its horns.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A pollard is a tree with its top cut off, or a hornless animal; also, a mixture of bran and meal.
The legal meaning of pollards as debased foreign coinage is entirely disconnected from any modern or historical common usage of the word. A researcher encountering the term in a medieval or early modern legal text must recognize immediately that the monetary sense — not the arboricultural one — is likely controlling, depending on context.
Common Confusion
The two legal meanings of pollards are easily conflated without context. The currency sense appears in criminal and customs statutes and in Blackstone's treatment of offenses against public trade. The tree sense appears in property law, specifically in disputes over waste and the rights of life tenants or leaseholders. Burrill notes both meanings without clearly separating them, which can mislead a researcher skimming quickly. The Second Edition of Black's compounds the issue by appending the tree meaning under the separate headword POLLENGERS in the same entry block, blurring the distinction between pollards as lopped trees and pollengers as the same.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
POLLENGERS: A closely related term appearing in the Second Edition of Black's. Pollengers are trees that have been lopped, functionally synonymous with pollards in the arboricultural sense. The terms appear to be used interchangeably or near-interchangeably in older property sources, though Plowden distinguishes them from timber trees as a class.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English legal history, particularly in records touching on trade regulation, currency offenses, or the wool and coin trade of the late thirteenth century, will encounter pollards in the monetary sense. The statute of 27 Edward I (1299) is the controlling authority, and the offense was treated with extraordinary severity — forfeiture of life and goods — reflecting the Crown's intense concern with currency debasement during this period.
For property law researchers working in English equity or common law materials from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, pollards appear in the context of waste doctrine. Whether a tenant had the right to lop, cut, or remove trees classified as pollards (rather than timber) was a live question in estate disputes. The distinction between pollards and timber trees affects what constitutes permissible use versus actionable waste — a distinction that carried real financial and legal consequences for life tenants, reversioners, and remaindermen.
The term has no continuing operational significance in modern American law. It is primarily a research term encountered when reading Blackstone, Plowden, or early equity cases. Researchers should be alert to context: a criminal or customs proceeding almost certainly invokes the monetary sense; a Chancery or common law property dispute almost certainly invokes the arboricultural sense.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the monetary definition and trace it to the same statutory authority (St. 27 Edw. I, c. 3) and the same valuation (two pollards per sterling penny). Black's First and Second Editions and Burrill all cite Blackstone's Commentaries at the same passage (4 Bl. Comm. 98) and reference Dyer's reports, though page citations vary slightly across editions — a minor but illustrative reminder that historical dictionary citations to older reporters require verification against the original.
Burrill is the most expansive of the three, noting the arboricultural meaning with a citation to Ambler's reports. Black's Second Edition gestures at the same territory but displaces it to the immediately following entry for POLLENGERS, citing Plowden. Neither Black's edition nor Burrill adequately theorizes the relationship between the two meanings or explains why they share a headword — they appear to be etymologically related through the concept of "cutting back" or "clipping," which also connects to coin clipping, but the dictionaries do not explore this.
None of the three dictionaries address the practical legal distinction between pollards and timber trees in any depth; researchers needing that doctrine will need to go beyond these dictionary sources to Coke on Littleton and the equity treatises on waste.
Jurisdictional Note
Both meanings are creatures of English law and have no direct American legal counterpart. The currency offense under St. 27 Edw. I has no analog in American statutory law. The pollard/timber distinction in waste doctrine was received into American common law in some states but was largely superseded by statutory definitions of waste and timber rights. American researchers working in colonial-era property disputes may encounter the term in English-derived pleadings or equity arguments.