Butlerage

In old Endish law. A very ancient hereditary duty belonging to the crown, at first called prisage, (q. v.) being the right of taking two tuns of wine from every ship importing into England twenty tuns or more, which by charter of Edward I. was exchanged into a duty of two shillings for every ton imported by merchant strangers, and called butlerage, because paid to the king's butler.

1 Bl. Com. 316.

Termes de la leg

Molloy de Jut. Marit. 302. 2 Inst. 69, 60.