Hist. [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 horngelde.
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. trans. Littleton’s Tenures, 34 a. It is said that in ye Marches of Scotlande some holde of the kinge by cornage, yt ys to say to blowe an horne for to warne the men of the countrey &c. when they here yt ye 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. 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.
