Definition
Poundage has three distinct legal meanings, each arising from a different historical context:
1. Sheriff's fee on executions. The commission allowed to a sheriff or other enforcement officer, calculated as a percentage of the total amount actually levied under a writ of execution. The fee is expressed as a rate per pound of the sum collected — historically, so many pence per pound sterling of proceeds. This is the dominant modern legal usage in jurisdictions that retain the concept.
2. Impoundment release fee. The sum an owner of impounded animals must pay to secure their release from a pound. Distinct from any fine or penalty, poundage in this sense is the administrative fee owed to the officer or authority operating the pound.
3. Historical English customs subsidy. In old English law, a duty of twelve pence in the pound levied on the value of all merchandise exported or imported, applicable to both denizens (subjects) and aliens — though alien merchants often paid at a higher rate. This subsidy was granted to the Crown and formed part of the broader system of tonnage and poundage, a package of customs revenues historically voted to the monarch by Parliament.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A charge based on the weight of something in pounds; a charge based on the value of something in pounds sterling; a weight measured in pounds; body weight.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A sum deducted from a pound, or a certain sum paid for each pound; a commission; also the subsidy of twelve pence in the pound formerly granted to the Crown on goods exported or imported.
The gap between common and legal meaning is real but partial. The Wiktionary definition captures the arithmetic structure of poundage — a rate per pound — but a researcher encountering the term in legal sources must determine which of three specific legal applications is at work: the officer's commission on execution proceeds, the impoundment fee, or the historical customs duty. Common usage preserves the pricing mechanism but loses the procedural and institutional context entirely.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Tonnage and poundage. The paired English customs revenue: tonnage was a duty on imported wine and other goods calculated per tun (cask); poundage was the ad valorem duty on merchandise generally. The two were routinely granted together by Parliament and were a recurring source of constitutional conflict between Parliament and the early Stuart monarchy in the seventeenth century. A researcher encountering "poundage" in pre-1700 English legal or parliamentary materials almost certainly means this customs subsidy, not the sheriff's commission.
Why It Matters in Research
The three meanings of poundage are not interchangeable, and context is essential. A researcher in pre-modern English sources — statutes, Parliamentary debates, constitutional histories — will most often encounter poundage as the customs subsidy and should cross-reference the tonnage and poundage grants. That usage is essentially extinct as a live legal doctrine but appears constantly in historical materials relating to the prerogative of taxation and Parliamentary supply.
In American sources from the colonial period through the nineteenth century, poundage typically means the sheriff's execution commission. The rate varied considerably by jurisdiction and by statute, and Bouvier's caution that it "varies in different states and to different officers" is well-founded. A researcher calculating what a creditor actually recovered from a judgment must account for poundage as a deduction from execution proceeds. Early American statutes fixing the rate will often use poundage without definition, assuming the English usage as background.
The impoundment fee usage is the narrowest. It appears most often in municipal ordinances, animal control statutes, and local practice materials. In this context poundage operates more like a storage fee than a tax or commission, and confusion with the sheriff's fee usage is a genuine trap.
Historical sources — including Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's — adequately flag all three meanings but give minimal guidance on how to distinguish them in practice. None of the historical dictionaries addresses twentieth- or twenty-first-century American statutory treatment, where "poundage" has been replaced in many jurisdictions by fee schedules with different terminology.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on substance. Black's (2nd Ed.), Bouvier's, and Burrill's all identify the sheriff's execution commission as the primary modern legal meaning and note the old English customs subsidy as the historical antecedent. Burrill adds the citation to Cowell for the customs usage, grounding it in English lexicographic tradition.
Where the sources diverge modestly: Bouvier's is the most practically oriented, noting that the commission "varies in different states and to different officers" — a signal that American researchers should not assume a fixed rate. Black's 2nd Ed. adds the impoundment-fee usage that Black's 1st Ed. omits, reflecting either an editorial expansion or an acknowledgment that this usage had become sufficiently common to warrant separate treatment. Webster's 1913 tracks the legal sources closely and adds Blackstone as authority for the customs-subsidy meaning, which is useful for tracing the doctrinal pedigree.
None of the historical dictionaries addresses the constitutional dimension of tonnage and poundage — the conflict between Charles I and Parliament over collection of the duties without Parliamentary authorization — which is essential context for researchers working in seventeenth-century English legal and constitutional history.
Jurisdictional Note
In England, poundage as a sheriff's fee was historically regulated by statute and court rule; the terminology persists in some Commonwealth jurisdictions. In the United States, the concept survives in many states but has been rebranded — look for "sheriff's commission," "levy fee," or percentage-based fee schedules in execution statutes. Some states have abolished the concept entirely in favor of flat fees.