Definition
Scotal was a form of extortion practiced by officers of the royal forest in medieval England. Forest officers who kept alehouses used the threat of their official displeasure — and the coercive power that came with their positions — to compel local people to patronize their establishments. The practice amounted to a forced trade: drink at the officer's house or risk harassment, adverse treatment, or the abuse of forest law enforcement against you. Scotal was explicitly prohibited by the Charter of the Forest, c. 7.
Why It Matters in Research
Scotal is a narrow, archaic term confined to a specific chapter of medieval English forest law. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in two contexts: commentary on the Charter of the Forest (1217), the companion document to Magna Carta that governed royal forest rights and the obligations of forest officers, and in older English legal dictionaries and treatises glossing obsolete forest-law vocabulary.
The term has no modern legal application. It does not appear in American law, and it dropped from practical legal usage as the royal forest system dissolved. For researchers working in medieval or early modern English legal history, scotal is a useful marker for the broader pattern of office-abuse that forest law was designed to address — officials leveraging their enforcement power to extract private economic benefit. This connects to the larger history of administrative corruption and the development of protections against official coercion in English public law.
If your research touches on the Charter of the Forest specifically, note that the prohibition of scotal sits alongside related prohibitions on other officer abuses (such as cheminage and scotching), and these terms cluster together in the same commentaries. Wharton's Law Lexicon, cited in both Black's editions, is the connecting source here and the appropriate next stop for contextual depth.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's editions are in close agreement, differing only in a single word: the first edition renders the practice "tortionate" while the second corrects this to "extortionate" — almost certainly a typographical correction rather than a substantive change. The core definition is identical across both sources.
Neither edition elaborates beyond the basic description, and neither situates scotal within the broader structure of forest law or explains the mechanism of coercion in detail. The entries function as glosses rather than full explanations. Wharton is the common underlying source for both Black's entries, and researchers needing more context should consult the Charter of the Forest directly and commentaries on English forest law rather than relying solely on the dictionary tradition, which treats this term minimally.