Butlerage
A Law Dictionary and Glossary · George C. Kinney · 1893
A Law Dictionary and Glossary
In old English law
An 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. By charter of Edward L it was changed to a duty of two shillings for every tun imported by merchant strangers, — called butlerage, because paid to the king's butler.