Definition
An archaic Latin term used in medieval English legal proceedings, particularly in the context of the assise (assize). Arramare means to bring or initiate a legal proceeding — most commonly an assize — against another party. The term is functionally equivalent to what later legal usage would call arraigning or bringing a formal legal action. It appears with regularity in Bracton's thirteenth-century treatise on the laws and customs of England, where it describes the act of a plaintiff formally raising or setting in motion an assize against a defendant.
Common Confusion
Arramare is frequently elided into arraign without acknowledgment of the procedural shift the terminology underwent. The two terms share a root and Burrill explicitly traces the connection, but arramare belongs to the civil and property-focused world of the medieval assize, while arraign in its modern form belongs to criminal procedure. A researcher who reads arramare and immediately maps it onto the modern arraignment process will misread the nature of the proceeding being described. The assize that is arramavit is a form of action, not a criminal charging instrument.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval common law sources, particularly Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, will encounter arramare repeatedly in the context of assize procedure. The critical navigational point is that this term does not mean arraignment in the modern criminal sense — the later, more familiar procedural step of formally reading charges to a criminal defendant and receiving a plea. Conflating arramare with modern arraignment will produce a misreading of the source. When Bracton writes that A. arramavit assisam versus B., the meaning is that A. brought or initiated the assize against B., not that A. was called before a court to answer charges.
The phonological and orthographic drift from arramare to arrainare (and eventually to arraign) is significant for tracing the history of procedural terminology. Burrill identifies this as corruption by a single-letter change, but the doctrinal content of the term also shifted substantially as the assise procedure transformed over centuries. Researchers tracing the etymology of arraign backward through historical sources should expect to pass through arrainare before reaching arramare, and should treat these as related but not identical terms reflecting different stages of procedural evolution.
The term is largely confined to Latin-language legal manuscripts and treatises of the medieval period. It will not appear in English-language year books or later pleading records without significant transformation. Any encounter with the term outside Bracton or comparable medieval Latin sources warrants close attention to context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary secondary source treating arramare in any depth. Burrill correctly identifies the term as a Latin word of frequent occurrence specifically in Bracton, and notes the derivation of the modern arraign through the intermediate form arrainare. He provides the illustrative passage from Bracton folio 110 — Ad assisam capiendam quam A. arramavit versus B. — which is the clearest available gloss on the term's operative meaning. No meaningful divergence exists among the historical legal dictionaries on this point, as the term is sufficiently archaic and specialized that most later dictionaries either omit it or route the researcher immediately to arraign without detailed treatment of the Latin antecedent.
What the historical dictionaries do not adequately address is the functional distance between arramare as a term of assize initiation and arraign as a term of criminal procedure. Burrill notes the connection and the corruption, but does not fully develop the doctrinal discontinuity. Researchers should not read Burrill's cross-reference to arraign as suggesting that the two terms are interchangeable across their respective procedural contexts.