Definition
A small feudal duty historically paid by servile tenants in Wylegh to the abbot of Colchester. The term designates a local customary payment of the type common in medieval English manorial arrangements, where unfree tenants owed periodic renders — in money, goods, or labor — to their lord as a condition of holding land. The precise nature or rate of the payment is not recorded in surviving legal dictionary sources; its significance lies in its status as a named customary obligation tied to a specific locality and ecclesiastical lord.
Why It Matters in Research
Snottering Silver is a hyperlocal term with no general legal application. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in one context: historical surveys of feudal and manorial dues, particularly those drawing on John Cowell's Interpreter (1607), which appears to be the original source for both Black's editions. Any researcher encountering this term in a primary source document — a manorial roll, rental, or monastic account — should treat it as a locality-specific customary render rather than a term of general common law. Do not attempt to interpret it through the lens of standard feudal dues such as tallage, chevage, or merchet without direct evidence linking those frameworks to the Wylegh tenancy.
The First Edition of Black's entry contains an editorial contamination worth flagging: it appends a definition of the word "So" (as a legal connective equivalent to "hence" or "therefore," citing an Indiana case) to the tail of the Snottering Silver entry. This is a typographical or editorial artifact — the two definitions have no substantive connection. Researchers consulting the First Edition should be alert to this and not conflate the two entries.
Because this term is documented only through Cowell's transmission, its reliability depends on Cowell's access to the original manorial or monastic records of Colchester Abbey. Those records, to the extent they survive, would be the authoritative source for any serious historical inquiry.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's editions reproduce the same one-sentence definition, tracing directly to Cowell. Neither edition expands on the payment's amount, frequency, legal basis, or whether it survived into later periods. The Second Edition strips the entry to its essentials, eliminating the "So" contamination present in the First Edition — suggesting editorial cleanup between editions rather than any new substantive research.
Cowell's Interpreter remains the anchor source. Researchers should note that Cowell's work was itself controversial (it was condemned by Parliament in 1610, partly for its treatment of royal prerogative), though that controversy does not bear directly on his reporting of local manorial customs. His entries on obscure local dues are generally regarded as faithful transcriptions from records available to him, but independent verification is difficult where original manorial documents have not survived.
No other standard legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus is known to carry this term. Its appearance in Black's is almost certainly inherited from the English legal antiquarian tradition rather than from active legal practice.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to a single English locality and has no known application outside the historical manorial context of Wylegh and Colchester Abbey. It has no relevance to American law and no recognized equivalent in any U.S. jurisdiction.