Definition
STAPLE carries two distinct legal meanings, one rooted in English domestic commercial law and one in international law. Both concern the regulation of trade through designated places and controlled access to markets.
1. English Law — Designated Market Town. A staple was a mart or market, specifically a town or place officially designated as the site where certain commodities — principally wool, lead, leather, tin, and cloth — had to be brought for sale. Trade in these goods was channeled through staple towns by royal authority, and merchants operating within the staple system were subject to its particular rules, officers (the Mayor of the Staple), and courts. The staple was not merely a customs convenience but a legal institution: transactions conducted within it had recognized procedures, and debts acknowledged there could be enforced by a distinctive legal process — the statute staple — which allowed creditors a faster, more powerful remedy against debtors than ordinary common law action.
2. International Law — Right of Staple. In the law of nations, the right of staple describes the sovereign power to compel foreign merchants to offer their goods for sale only in a designated place within the territory before proceeding elsewhere. It was a tool of economic control, effectively forcing foreign trade to pass through a defined point where duties could be collected, local merchants given first purchase opportunity, and the crown's regulatory authority exercised. Bouvier notes plainly that this practice was not in use in the United States.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Today "staple" in everyday English most commonly means a wire fastener — either the U-shaped metal clip that binds paper together, or the larger version used in construction and carpentry.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 preserves the older commercial sense nearly intact: a staple was "a settled mart; an emporium; a city or town to which merchants brought commodities for sale or exportation in bulk."
The gap between contemporary common usage and legal meaning is total. A researcher encountering "staple" in modern English would have no purchase on its legal meaning whatsoever. Even the Webster's 1913 definition — which is closer — omits the coercive regulatory dimension: the legal staple was not merely where merchants chose to trade but where they were required to trade.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Statute Staple: A bond or obligation acknowledged before the Mayor of the Staple under the Statute of the Staple (1353), giving the creditor an expedited enforcement remedy against the debtor's lands, goods, and body. Closely related to, but distinct from, the statute merchant. Both were mechanisms for securing commercial credit through royal-backed enforcement, and both appear in historical legal instruments.
Right of Staple: The international law variant described in definition 2 above — a sovereign's claimed entitlement to require foreign merchants to sell within a fixed location.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter "staple" in at least three distinct legal contexts across the corpus, and conflating them produces serious misreadings.
First, in medieval and early modern English legal materials, "staple" refers to the institutional market town system and its associated courts and officers. Documents referencing the "Mayor of the Staple," "staple merchants," or particular staple towns (Calais, Westminster, Bristol) are operating within this framework.
Second, the statute staple is a recurring instrument in property and commercial law records from the thirteenth through seventeenth centuries. It appears in conveyancing materials, creditor proceedings, and discussions of real property encumbrances. Researchers working with Blackstone, Coke, or earlier property law sources will need to distinguish statute staple from statute merchant — the procedural and substantive differences matter.
Third, in international trade law materials and treatises on the law of nations, "right of staple" is a distinct concept of sovereign economic regulation. Chitty's Commercial Law and Coke's Fourth Institutes are the primary sources the historical dictionaries point to.
The term has no meaningful modern American legal usage in any of these senses. A researcher who encounters "staple" in a contemporary U.S. legal document is almost certainly seeing the ordinary English word — a fastener — used in a non-legal context, or perhaps a commodity described as a "staple" good (a separate, economic usage meaning a basic or primary commodity). None of the historical dictionaries address this commodity sense directly, but it surfaces in trade regulation and antitrust materials.
The Rapalje & Lawrence and Anderson's entries in the source material are poorly matched to this term — the Rapalje fragment appears to be from an entry on "sureties" or "recognizance," not staple, and the Anderson's fragment begins with a discussion of laches before offering only the phrase "A settled, established ma—" which appears to be a truncated definition of "staple" as a noun meaning something settled or established. Neither fragment adds reliable information on the legal meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Burrill agree closely on the English law definition, all citing 2 Reeve's History of English Law for the mart/market meaning. Bouvier's focuses on the international law right of staple, citing Chitty's Commercial Law and Coke's Fourth Institutes, and explicitly notes the practice was not used in the United States — a practical flag for American researchers that distinguishes a live doctrine from a historical artifact.
None of the historical dictionaries provide substantial treatment of statute staple as an independent entry under this headword, though it is covered under "Statute" entries in Black's and Bouvier's. This is a gap researchers should note: the instrument most likely to appear in primary source documents gets its fullest treatment elsewhere in these dictionaries, not here.
Historical sources across the shelf are consistent in treating staple as an obsolete English institution of commercial regulation. None treat it as having ongoing American relevance.
Jurisdictional Note
The staple system was an English institution with no American successor. Neither the federal government nor any state adopted the right of staple or the statute staple as operative law. Researchers working in colonial American materials may occasionally encounter references to English staple regulations affecting colonial trade — particularly in wool and tobacco — but these reflect English imperial policy rather than colonial domestic law.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Medieval Trade Regulation; Foreign Merchants and Market Rights; Statute Merchant and Statute Staple