cornage Hist.
(ˈkɔːnɪdʒ)
[a. OF. cornage, ‘droit qui se levait sur les bêtes à cornes’, f. corn, corne horn: in med.L. cornagium.]
A feudal ‘service’, being a form of rent fixed by the number of horned cattle; horngeld.
| [1183 Boldon Bk. in Domesday Bk. Supp. (1816) 568 Due ville redd. xxx. sol. de cornag' & ii. vacc' de metryde. 1238–9 Bracton Note Bk. (ed. Maitland 1887) No. 1270 Et preterea quia dedit cornagium quod anglice dicitur horn⁓gelde. c 1290 Fleta iii. xiv. §9 Sunt etiam aliæ praestationes, ut auxilia in Comitatu Vice comitatum..Hydagia, Cornagia, Cariagia, Sectæ, etc.] 1872 E. W. Robertson Hist. Ess. 133 The tenure of a pastoral state of society was Cornage. The herd was numbered, or the flock, the tenth animal was set apart as the prerogative of the king or overlord. |
¶ The following erroneous explanation given by Littleton, as an ‘it is said’, has been repeated in the Law-books and Dictionaries down to the present time. It was perhaps founded on the passage from Bracton given above, in which there is mention both of a tenure by serjeanty, and of ‘cornage’ or horngeld.
| 1574 tr. Littleton's Tenures 34 a, It is said that in y⊇ Marches of Scotlande some holde of the kinge by cornage, y{supt} ys to say to blowe an horne for to warne the men of the countrey etc. when they here y{supt} y⊇ Scots or other enemies will come. 1613 Sir H. Finch Law (1636) 149. 1628 Coke On Litt. 107. 1641 Termes de la Ley 85. 1679 Blount Anc. Tenures 13. 1767 Blackstone Comm. II. 74 Tenure by cornage..was, to wind a horn when the Scots or other enemies entered the land. 1818 Cruise Digest (ed. 2) III. 321. |
¶ cornage has also been misread as coruage, coraage, and treated as a distinct word, with various conjectural explanations.
| c 1250 Bracton ii. xvi. 8 Quædam communes præstationes..sicut sunt Hidagia, Cornagia [ed. 1569 has coraagia: so Cowel, Blount, etc.], & Caruagia. 1607 J. Cowell Interpr., Coraage is a kinde of imposition extraordinarie..and it seemeth to be of certaine measures of corn. 1656 Blount Glossogr. 1658 Phillips, Coraage, in Common-law, is a certain extraordinary imposition upon certain measures of Corn, which is upon some unusual occasion. |