portmote

English

Etymology

From Middle English portemot, portemote, portmot, portmote; equivalent to port +‎ mote; compare Anglo-Latin portimōtus.

Noun

portmote (plural portmotes)

1. (law, obsolete, UK) A court, or mote, held in a port town.
   • 1771, William, Sir Blackstone, “Of the King's Prerogative”, in Commentaries on the Laws of England‎^[1], volume 1, page 264:

     And in England it hath always been held, that the king is lord of the whole shore, and particularly is the guardian of the ports and havens, which are the inlets and gates of the realm: and therefore, so early as the reign of king John, we find ships seised by the king's officers for putting in at a place that was not a legal port. These legal ports were undoubtedly at first assigned by the crown; since to each of them a court of portmote is incident, the jurisdiction of which must flow from the royal authority: the great ports of the sea are also referred to, as well known and established, by statute 4 Hen. IV. c. 20. which prohibits the landing elsewhere under pain of confiscation: and the statute 1 Eliz. c. 11. recites that the franchise of landing and discharging had been frequently granted by the crown.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “portmote”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)