Definition
An archaic Law French spelling of appurtenances. The term denotes incorporeal rights and things annexed to or associated with land — rights that, while not physically part of the land itself, pass with it and are considered legally incident to its ownership. In Britton's usage, apurtenaunces served as a near-synonym for incorporeal things (choses nent corporeles), encompassing rights in land such as easements, commons, and similar non-possessory interests that attach to a principal tenement.
This entry documents the historical spelling and usage. Researchers seeking the operative legal concept should consult APPURTENANCES.
Common Confusion
APURTENAUNCES vs. APPURTENANCES: These are the same term, differently spelled. The Law French orthography (apurtenaunces) appears in medieval and early common law sources, particularly Britton. By the time of Blackstone and the later English commentators, the Anglicized form (appurtenances) had become standard. Encountering apurtenaunces in a historical document is not a signal of a distinct legal concept — it is a spelling variant, not a divergent term. Researchers who encounter the Law French form in a source and search for it as if it were a separate entry may fail to locate the relevant doctrine under its modern spelling.
Why It Matters in Research
The chief research value of this entry is navigational. Law Mind corpus researchers working in medieval and early common law sources — Year Books, Britton, Bracton, Fleta, and related texts — will encounter the Law French orthography and should recognize it immediately as appurtenances. Failure to make this connection can produce gaps in a research trail or the false impression that a distinct concept is at issue.
Britton's usage is particularly notable because it equates apurtenaunces with the broader category of incorporeal things (choses nent corporeles). This framing is slightly wider than the way appurtenances typically functions in later common law, where the term more precisely describes rights incident to a specific dominant tenement rather than the general class of incorporeal interests. Researchers tracing the development of the incorporeal hereditaments doctrine should note this earlier, looser usage and be careful not to read Britton's formulation backward onto later authorities without accounting for the conceptual narrowing that occurred over time.
Because Law French spelling was not standardized, variant spellings of this and related terms (appurtenance, appertenance, appertenaunt, appurtenaunce) appear across sources with no consistent rule. A thorough search of any historical corpus should account for these variants. Index and digest entries compiled before the twentieth century may not consolidate them reliably.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical shelf source for this entry, and its treatment is brief but precise. Burrill identifies apurtenaunces as Law French, cites Britton as the source of record, and glosses the term as a synonym for incorporeal things or rights in land. This is accurate as far as it goes, though Burrill does not elaborate on the relationship between this early usage and the later, more refined doctrine of appurtenances as incident to a dominant tenement.
What historical dictionaries as a class tend to underserve here is the transition: how the broad Britton formulation gave way to the technically narrower concept familiar from conveyancing practice and later real property law. Researchers who need that developmental arc will find Burrill's entry a starting point only and should carry the inquiry into the appurtenances entry and the relevant treatise literature.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Appurtenances; Incorporeal Hereditaments.