Definition
A formal pledge of faith between a man and a woman in which each promises to marry the other. In legal usage, affiance denotes the act of plighting troth — the solemn mutual commitment to marry — rather than the marriage itself. It is the formal engagement, distinguished from mere courtship on one side and from the solemnization of marriage on the other.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Faith or trust; a solemn engagement, especially a pledge of marriage.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Plighted faith; a marriage contract or promise; also, trust, reliance, and confidence more broadly — as in reliance on divine love or a person's steadfast loyalty.
The legal meaning narrows the common meaning considerably. In ordinary and literary English, affiance carried a broader sense of trust or faith generally (as in Tennyson's usage). In law, the term was confined specifically to the mutual promise of marriage — a contractual act with potential legal consequences, not a sentiment. Researchers should not import the broader common meaning when reading affiance in legal instruments or pleadings.
Common Confusion
AFFIANCE / BETROTHAL / ESPOUSALS: These three terms describe substantially the same event — the pre-marriage commitment — but carry different weights depending on period and jurisdiction. Espousals was the more formal canonical term used in ecclesiastical proceedings and canon law treatises. Betrothal is the general modern term. Affiance appears most frequently in common law sources and older English legal dictionaries, often with reference to Littleton's Tenures. Researchers treating these as interchangeable for historical source work should exercise caution; the terminology can signal whether a writer is working from canon law, common law, or continental civil law traditions.
Why It Matters in Research
Affiance is a term of primarily historical legal significance. It does not appear in modern statutory family law or most contemporary legal proceedings, but it surfaces regularly in:
Pre-twentieth-century breach of promise actions. A valid affiance was the predicate act for a breach of promise of marriage claim. Researchers tracing the elements of breach of promise suits — a cause of action abolished in many jurisdictions during the twentieth century — will encounter affiance as the operative term for the promise that was breached.
Ecclesiastical and equity records. Courts of equity and ecclesiastical courts exercised concurrent jurisdiction over matters of betrothal and marriage formation through much of English legal history. Affiance appears heavily in equity pleadings and church court records from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.
Property and dower research. Historical dower rights and certain property conveyances touching on marriage settlements may turn on the date or fact of affiance. In such contexts, distinguishing affiance (the promise) from the subsequent solemnization is legally material.
Corpus navigation: When searching Law Mind for historical family law materials, affiance may not be indexed alongside modern terms like engagement or betrothal. Run parallel searches. The term also appears in proximity to discussions of Littleton's Tenures Section 39, which is the anchor citation across all historical dictionary sources for this term.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries converge almost entirely. Black's (both editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill all define affiance as the plighting of troth between a man and woman on an agreement of marriage, and all anchor the definition to Littleton's Tenures § 39. Burrill adds the fuller Latin lineage (affidatio, from affidare) and cross-references affidare as a related entry, making it the most technically complete of the four.
The minor divergence worth noting: Black's 2nd edition renders the definition as "a man or woman promise each other" (using or rather than and), which is a trivial variation but suggests a slight modernizing edit in the revision. Rapalje & Lawrence is the most compressed, offering the definition in two phrases and immediately pivoting to the separate term affiant, suggesting the editors viewed affiance as needing little elaboration by the time of their compilation.
None of the historical dictionaries addresses the procedural dimensions of affiance — its role in breach of promise pleading, for instance — which reflects their emphasis on definition over doctrine. Researchers seeking the operational legal significance of affiance in litigation must look beyond dictionary sources to treatises on domestic relations and equity pleading.
Jurisdictional Note
Affiance as a legal term of art is primarily English common law in origin and most frequently appears in English and early American legal sources. American courts adopted the concept under the rubric of breach of promise of marriage. Most U.S. jurisdictions abolished the breach of promise action by statute in the mid-to-late twentieth century, rendering affiance functionally obsolete in active American litigation. It retains relevance in Scottish, ecclesiastical, and civil law traditions through analogous but terminologically distinct concepts.