staple

A major commodity grown, traded and demanded; e.g. grain, salt, flour. Such commodity is usually very important to the local economy where it is grown or produced. Raw material.

In English law, a mart or market. A place where the buying and selling of wool, lead, leather, and other articles were put under certain terms.

n International law, the right of staple, as exercised by a people upon foreign merchants, is defined to be that they may not allow them to set their merchandise and wares to sale but in a certain place. This practice is not in use in the United States. Law of the staple.

n England, law administered in the court of the mayor of the staple; the law-merchant

@ staple inn

An inn of chancery.

See Inns of Chancery

@ statute staple

The English statute of the staple, 27 Ed. Ill, stat. 2, confined the sale of all commodities to be exported to certain towns in England, called estaple or staple, where foreigners might resort. It authorized a security for money, commonly called statute staple, to be taken by traders for the benefit of commerce; the mayor of the place is entitled to take recognizance of a debt in proper form, which had the effect to convey the lands of the debtor to the creditor till out of the rents and profits of them he should be satisfied. A security for a debt acknowledged to be due, so called from its being entered into before the mayor of the staple, that is to say, the grand mart for the principal commodities or manufactures of the kingdom, formerly held by act of parliament in certain trading towns. In other respects it resembled the statute-merchant (q.v.), but like that has now fallen into disuse

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