Definition
An Anglo-Norman (Law French) verb meaning "to allow" or "to permit." Used in early English legal texts and statutes to express the granting, conceding, or recognizing of a right, delay, privilege, or procedural benefit. The term appears in medieval legislative instruments and legal instruments as a term of authorization or acknowledgment by a court or sovereign authority.
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Why It Matters in Research
ALLUER is a term researchers will encounter only in close reading of early English legal materials — primarily statutes, writs, and instruments drafted in Law French during the medieval and early modern periods. Its significance is almost entirely historical and linguistic rather than doctrinal.
The key research trap is mistaking the term for a substantive legal concept with enduring doctrine attached to it, when it is better understood as a functional verb of legal draftsmanship. When you encounter ALLUER in a source, the important question is not what the term itself means as a legal category, but rather what was being allowed — the substantive content lies in the object of the verb, not the verb itself.
The phrase preserved in Burrill — "Santz alluer les délais qe sont allues par commune ley" (without allowing the delays which are allowed by the common law) — appears in the Articuli super Chartas, a 1300 statute confirming and supplementing Magna Carta. This context matters: the phrase concerns procedural delays in legal proceedings, and the statute's thrust was to prevent officials from circumventing common law protections by denying parties delays to which they were entitled. A researcher working on the history of procedural rights, continuances, or the early common law's protection of process will find this usage directly relevant.
Because ALLUER belongs to the Law French vocabulary of English law, researchers should expect to encounter cognate forms (allué, allues, allower) and related Latin equivalents (allocare, admittere) in parallel texts. Cross-referencing between Law French terms and their Latin counterparts is essential when working with medieval statutory compilations, since the same instrument may shift between languages or appear in variant translations.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal shelf source for this term. Burrill correctly identifies ALLUER as Law French, correctly situates it in old English law, and correctly cites the Articuli super Chartas as the illustrative source. The entry is compact but accurate.
What Burrill does not address — and what no period dictionary fully develops — is the broader terminological ecology in which ALLUER operated. The term is one of a cluster of Law French authorization verbs (including ouster, granter, and conustre) that together formed the functional vocabulary of medieval English legal documents. Understanding ALLUER in isolation gives only partial purchase; understanding it as part of that vocabulary allows a researcher to read medieval instruments more fluently.
Historical dictionaries generally treat terms like ALLUER as mere glosses — providing the English equivalent and moving on. This is appropriate for the narrow question of translation, but insufficient for the researcher who wants to understand why the term appears where it does, in what procedural or statutory contexts, and what legal consequences followed from the act of allowing or not allowing.
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