STAPLE (Ang.-Sax. etapel, a prop, support; a heap, and hence a place where goods are stored up or exposed for sale), a term applied, in the commerce of the middle ages, in the first instance, to the towns in which the chief products of a country were sold, and afterward to the merchandise that was sold at the staple towns. The staple towns, at first chosen from convenience, came in the course of time to be invested with important privi leges. The staple merchandise of England has been enumerated as wool, wool-fells (.e., sheep-skins), leather, lead, and tin, to which have sometimes been added butter, cheese, and cloth. Wool was, however, in point of fact, a far more important article of export than any of the rest, and was really the subject of those multitudinous regulations which fixed the staple in particular towns, both of England and of the continent. Goods intended for exportation had, in the first instance, to be exposed for salt at the staple town; the principal purpose of this regulation being, probably, to restrict commerce to those places where the officers who cbllected the king's customs could superintend it. ,Another object kept in view in the provisions made in the 13th and 14th centuries with respect to the staple was the encouragement of the resort of foreign merchants; indeed, 'greater privileges seem to have been accorded to the foreign than to the English mer chants who attended the staple.
A tribunal of great antiquity, called the court of the staple, had cognizance of all questions which should arise between merchants, native or foreign. It was composed of an officer, called the mayor of the staple, re-elected yearly by the native and foreign merchants who attended the staple; two constables, appointed for life. also chosen by the merchants; a German and an Italian merchant; and six raedia'ors between buyers and sellers, of whom two were English, two German, and two I onit:nrd. The law administered was the lex mercatoria, and there was a provision that cruses in which one party was a foreigner should be tried by a jury one-half of whom were foreigners. The most important legislative enactments regarding the staple and the court of staple were the statute of action Burnel (11 Edward I.), by which merchants were enabled to sell the chattels of their debtor, and attach his person for debt; 13 Edw. 1. c. 3; and 27 Ed. III. c. 2, called the statute of staple, one object of which was to remove the staple formerly held at Calais to certain towns in England, Wales, and Ireland. With the growth of commerce the staples became more and more neglected, and IA last fell alto gether into disuse.