Definition
An obsolete unit of measure or weight used in old English commercial law, particularly in the weighing of wool. Two ways of wool constituted a sack. The term appears in medieval English legal and administrative records in the context of commodity measurement.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term in historical English records — particularly those touching on the wool trade, customs, taxation, or commodity law — should understand it as a unit of quantity rather than a place or a path. Its appearance in medieval sources is primarily commercial and administrative. Wool was a major export commodity in medieval England, heavily regulated and taxed by the Crown, and precise unit terminology was consequential in legal and fiscal documents of the period.
The term is rare enough that it will not appear in modern legal databases. Researchers working in digitized manuscript sources, Year Books, or early administrative records (particularly those touching on customs duties or wool staple regulations) are the most likely to encounter it. Cross-referencing with Fleta, the 13th-century legal treatise cited by Burrill, is the appropriate starting point for primary source confirmation. Burrill is the only major English-language legal dictionary to define this term, and even there the entry is minimal.
Do not confuse this term with the common English word "way" (a path or route), which also appears in Latin legal sources as via or cheminum. The spelling "waya" is a Latinized form specific to the measurement sense.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only legal dictionary treatment of this term, deriving it from the Latin "waya" as used in Fleta, lib. 2, c. 12, § 2. Burrill defines it straightforwardly as a measure or weight of wool, with two ways equaling one sack. No other historical legal dictionaries surveyed include an entry for this term. The absence from Jacob's Law Dictionary, Bouvier's Law Dictionary, and Black's Law Dictionary underscores how narrow and archaic the term is — it was already a historical curiosity by the time most modern legal dictionaries were compiled.
Fleta, the anonymous late 13th-century Latin legal treatise written in the reign of Edward I, is the authoritative primary source for this usage. It is one of the few surviving texts that systematically records commodity weights and measures in legal context, making it an important reference for anyone researching the legal infrastructure of the medieval English wool trade.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively of English legal and historical origin. It has no recognized counterpart in Scottish, Irish, or continental legal systems, and no relevance to American law.