Definition
A toll or duty historically paid for the official weighing of merchandise. The charge arose when goods were weighed at an authorized public scale or beam, typically operated under royal or municipal authority. The specific name for the duty varied by the type of goods weighed:
— Tronage: the weighage duty assessed for weighing wool at the king's beam (trone).
— Pesage: the weighage duty assessed for weighing other avoirdupois goods at authorized scales.
Weighage belongs to the broader category of ancient English trade tolls — charges collected not for the goods themselves, but for the regulatory or administrative service of official measurement.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A duty or toll paid for weighing merchandise.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A duty or toll paid for weighing merchandise.
The common and legal definitions are functionally identical in this instance. The term carried no double meaning in ordinary usage; it entered everyday language, to the extent it did, directly from commerce law. The legal significance lies not in any gap between legal and lay meaning, but in the precise regulatory context — weighage was not a freely negotiated fee but a compulsory charge tied to royal or municipal authority over weights and measures.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Tronage — Weighage specifically applicable to wool weighed at the king's beam (trone). Wool was a dominant export commodity in medieval England, and its weighing was subject to distinct royal oversight and toll schedules.
Pesage — Weighage applicable to other avoirdupois goods weighed at public or royal scales. The term derives from the French poids (weight) and reflects the Norman-influenced administrative vocabulary of English commercial law.
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Why It Matters in Research
Weighage is an obsolete term in active legal practice — no modern jurisdiction imposes it — but it appears with regularity in English legal history, commercial law treatises, and property records dealing with market rights, port authority, and royal prerogatives over trade. Researchers encountering the term in historical sources should be alert to several points:
First, weighage is one of a cluster of toll-type duties (alongside tollage, lastage, stallage, and pontage) that appear together in grants of market rights, borough charters, and franchises. Finding weighage in a source is a signal that related toll terms are likely nearby and that the document concerns a grant of market or port authority.
Second, the tronage/pesage distinction matters for understanding which goods and which administrative machinery were implicated. Wool was subject to particularly elaborate royal control in medieval England, and tronage records connect to the broader history of the wool staple and customs administration. Pesage records connect to municipal market governance.
Third, historical sources on weighage are sparse in American legal materials. The term is an English law artifact and does not appear in American statutes or case law in any operative sense. Researchers working in American corpus materials are unlikely to encounter it outside of treatise discussions of English law history.
Fourth, the Black's Law Dictionary first edition entry contains an apparent editorial artifact — text relating to "weighing the evidence" that bleeds in from an adjacent definition, referencing 9 Gray 393. This passage has nothing to do with weighage and should be disregarded. It is a typesetting error carried into the digitized source.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement on the substance of weighage: a toll for official weighing, subdivided into tronage (wool, king's beam) and pesage (other avoirdupois goods). All three sources trace the definition to Chitty's Commercial Law (volume 2, page 16), suggesting a common line of authority rather than independent verification.
Webster's 1913 and Wiktionary reproduce the legal definition without modification, confirming that the term did not develop a separate lay meaning.
No historical source provides a meaningful treatment of how weighage was assessed, collected, enforced, or litigated. The dictionary entries are definitional only. Researchers seeking operational depth — how these tolls functioned in practice, who collected them, how disputes were resolved — will need to look beyond legal dictionaries to specialized histories of English commercial regulation and borough law.
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Jurisdictional Note
Weighage is a term of English law with no independent American legal history. It does not appear in American statutory or common law as an operative concept. Researchers working in English legal history or comparative commercial law will find it relevant; those working in American law will not encounter it outside of historical or academic contexts.
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