1. A type of grand-sergeanty military tenure in which the tenant was bound to blow a horn to alert others whenever an enemy approached.
2. A form of tenure entitling a landowner to rent based on the number of horned cattle owned by the tenant. • Cornage may have developed into a type of serjeanty or knight-service tenure that obligated the tenant to blow a horn to warn of invaders, esp. along the border with Scotland. See KNIGHT-SERVICE; SERJEANTY. — Also termed (in senses 1 & 2) horn tenure.
3. A tribute of corn due only on special occasions, as distinguished from a regularly provided service. • This term has often been spelled coraage or coraagium, stemming perhaps from a spelling error in the 1569 edition of Bracton’s De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae.
