Definition
Ticarum is the Latin title of an early English statute establishing a standard of legal measures, specifically governing ells and perches. The statute is referenced in legal sources as the "statute of ells and perches" — a foundational measurement law that fixed units of length used in land description, cloth trade, and commerce. The term itself served as the statute's formal Latin designation, functioning as a title rather than a substantive legal concept.
An ell was a unit of length used primarily in the cloth trade; a perch (also called a rod or pole) was a unit of land measurement equal to a fixed number of feet, critical to surveying and conveyancing. Standardizing these measures was a matter of significant practical legal consequence in medieval England, where disputes over land boundaries and commercial transactions turned on the physical dimensions being reliably defined.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering ticarum in historical sources should treat it as a statute title, not a legal doctrine or cause of action. Its appearance in legal texts is almost always a citation reference — specifically the citation to 1 Blackstone's Commentaries 275 — rather than a substantive discussion. This means ticarum rarely appears in isolation; it surfaces as a parenthetical or footnote in works addressing the history of English weights and measures law.
The term is a useful marker for locating material on the medieval English standardization project that produced a series of measures statutes, including the Statute of Winchester and the Assize of Bread and Ale — a body of law that modern researchers often need to navigate when tracing the origins of regulatory authority over commerce and land description. Researchers working in early English conveyancing, land law, or trade regulation should note that the perch and ell appear throughout medieval plea rolls and conveyancing instruments; ticarum provides the statutory anchor for those measurements.
Because the Bouvier's entry in the source material appears to have been incorrectly compiled — substituting an entry for "Author" in place of ticarum — researchers using digitized or transcribed versions of Bouvier's should exercise caution. This is a concrete example of the transcription and indexing errors common in historical legal dictionaries, particularly in early compiled editions. Do not rely on Bouvier's as a corroborating source for this entry.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary agree precisely in their treatment: ticarum is the Latin title of the statute of ells and perches, an English statute standardizing measures, with the sole citation being 1 Bl. Comm. 275. The uniformity across these sources suggests they draw from a common root — likely Blackstone himself — rather than independent research. None of the historical dictionaries elaborate on the statute's date, its precise provisions, or its practical scope of application. Researchers needing substantive detail must go directly to Blackstone's Commentaries or to primary statutory sources.
The Bouvier's entry in the compiled source material is clearly an error — the text supplied is the Bouvier's entry for "Author," a wholly unrelated term. This is noted here for transparency and to flag that Bouvier's cannot be treated as offering independent confirmation of the definition.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: no source addresses when the statute was enacted, whether it was amended or superseded, or how courts actually applied the standards it established. The entries function as a reference pointer, not a legal analysis.
Jurisdictional Note
Ticarum is a term of exclusively English legal history with no direct counterpart in American law. Researchers working in American land law will encounter the perch and rod as surviving units of survey measurement, but the statutory authority in the United States derives from colonial and federal weights-and-measures legislation, not from ticarum itself.