Definition
An obsolete English criminal offense consisting of buying provisions, grain, or other consumable goods at a fair or market with the intent to resell them at a higher price in the same market, or in another market within four miles of the original purchase. The practice was condemned as an artificial manipulation of local food prices — each successive resale within the same marketplace drove up the cost of basic provisions for ordinary buyers. The person who committed the offense was called a regrator.
Regrating was one of three related market offenses in English law, alongside forestalling (intercepting goods before they reached the market) and engrossing (buying up large quantities of goods to corner the supply). All three were eventually abolished by statute in England — regrating and engrossing by 7 & 8 Vict. c. 24 (1844), which Rapalje & Lawrence confirms. Anderson's Dictionary traces the statutory offense to 5 & 6 Edw. VI c. 14 (1552), though the conduct was treated as criminal at common law before that codification.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "regrate." No independent common meaning; the verb "regrate" is not in active use in modern English outside historical or legal contexts.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately listed as an active English term in that period, consistent with its near-total displacement from ordinary usage by the mid-nineteenth century.
Editorial note: Because "regrating" carries no living common meaning, there is no meaningful gap between legal and common usage to navigate — the term is simply archaic. Researchers encountering it outside a legal or historical context are almost certainly reading a historical legal source.
Common Confusion
Regrating, forestalling, and engrossing are frequently grouped together and sometimes conflated in both historical sources and secondary commentary. The distinctions matter:
- Forestalling: intercepting sellers or goods before they reached the marketplace, or persuading sellers to raise prices before the market opened.
- Engrossing: buying up large quantities of a commodity in advance, effectively cornering supply.
- Regrating: buying goods already at market and reselling them at a profit in the same or a nearby market.
The conceptual overlap is real — all three targeted market manipulation — but the conduct is distinct. Bouvier's definition is notably broader than the others, sweeping in "every practice or device, by act, conspiracy, words, or news, to enhance the price of victuals or other merchandise," which arguably blurs regrating into the other two offenses. Researchers should not rely on Bouvier's formulation to distinguish regrating from engrossing or forestalling in a specific historical source.
Why It Matters in Research
Regrating is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in historical English legal sources — treatises, abridgments, indictments, and commentaries from roughly the fifteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries. It does not survive as an active legal concept in any major common law jurisdiction.
Several research traps are worth noting. First, definitional scope varies across sources. Burrill and Black's confine regrating to the act of resale within the same market or within four miles. Bouvier's expansive formulation extends it to any device to enhance prices, which is closer to a general market manipulation offense than the narrow resale offense described elsewhere. If you are trying to establish the precise historical elements of the offense — for a legal history project, an appeal to common law background, or a comparative analysis — Black's and Burrill's narrower formulations, both citing Blackstone (4 Bl. Com. 158) and Coke (3 Inst. 195–196), are the more reliable guides.
Second, the statutory history requires care. Anderson's Dictionary dates the statutory form to 1552 (Edw. VI), but the abolition statute cited by Rapalje & Lawrence is 1844 (7 & 8 Vict. c. 24). Between those dates, both common law and statutory versions coexisted in different configurations. A source written before 1844 may be describing either common law or statutory regrating without distinguishing between them.
Third, American reception of this offense is thin. The Georgia case cited in Black's 2nd edition — Forsyth Mfg. Co. v. Castlen, 112 Ga. 199 (1900) — is one of the few American judicial references, and it arises in the context of general market manipulation rather than a direct prosecution for the English offense. Regrating did not transplant into American criminal codes as a distinct offense; its conceptual descendants are antitrust and price manipulation doctrines.
Researchers working on the history of competition law, market regulation, or consumer protection law will find regrating useful as a doctrinal ancestor. It represents one of the earliest formal legal efforts to regulate secondary markets and price inflation at the retail level.
Historical Dictionary Support
The six source dictionaries are substantially consistent on the core definition: buying goods at market for immediate resale at a profit, in the same market or within four miles. Black's (both editions), Burrill, and Rapalje & Lawrence all anchor to the same canonical authorities — Coke's Institutes and Blackstone's Commentaries — and agree that the offense was abolished by Victorian statute.
The main point of divergence is Bouvier's broader formulation, which sweeps in conspiratorial and reputational devices to raise prices. This may reflect Bouvier's tendency toward comprehensive definition rather than a genuinely different legal understanding, but it makes Bouvier a less reliable source for the specific elements of regrating as distinguished from the related offenses.
Anderson's Dictionary adds useful statutory precision by tracing the offense to the 1552 Edwardian statute and framing it explicitly as "an offense against public trade" — a framing that situates regrating within the broader history of trade regulation rather than treating it merely as a market nuisance.
No historical dictionary in the corpus addresses the American reception of regrating or its relationship to modern antitrust concepts. That gap is significant for researchers connecting historical market offenses to contemporary competition law.
Jurisdictional Note
Regrating as a distinct criminal offense is English in origin and was abolished in England by 1844. It was never codified as a separate offense in American jurisdictions. Scottish and Irish legal sources may use the term but follow the English framework. Researchers should treat any reference to regrating in American sources as either a citation to English authority or a loose invocation of the underlying market-manipulation concept.