Definition
In old English law, a hearth or fireplace; by extension, a house or dwelling. The term derives from the Latin *astrum* and appears in Law French legal texts, where possession of a hearth within a vill served as a marker of membership in the local community and entitlement to communal rights. The phrase *chescun home communer que ad astre en mesme la ville* — every commoner who has a hearth in the same town or vill — illustrates how the term functioned as a shorthand for settled household presence rather than mere physical proximity to a location.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a relic of medieval English legal writing and will appear almost exclusively in Law French sources, Year Books, and early treatises dealing with common rights, vill membership, and local obligations. Researchers working in those materials should understand that *astre* is not simply architectural description — it is a legal threshold. Having a hearth in the vill was a recognized basis for asserting communal rights, and its absence could be a ground for excluding a claimant from those rights.
The term does not survive into modern legal usage and will not appear in post-medieval statutory or common law sources under this name. Researchers tracing the evolution of concepts like domicile, settlement, or common rights should note that the functional logic behind *astre* — hearth as proof of household, household as proof of belonging — persists in later doctrines even as the vocabulary changes. The poor law settlement rules, for instance, drew on related ideas without using the term.
Cross-referencing to Spelman's *Glossarium* and Britton (c. 59) is productive when working with this term, as those are the anchor sources Burrill draws on. Year Book references from the reign of Edward III are the primary corpus where this term surfaces in context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the sole dictionary source here, and his entry is brief but precise. He correctly identifies the Law French form (*astre*), the Latin cognate (*astrum*, though the hearth sense is more properly from *astra* or related vernacular roots), and the Latin gloss (*caminus*, meaning hearth or fireplace). The citation to Britton, chapter 59, grounds the term in a specific legal context — communal rights tied to household presence in the vill — and the Year Book reference (Trinity Term, 5 Edward III, folio 16) locates it in early fourteenth-century judicial usage.
Burrill does not expand on the substantive legal implications of hearth-holding, nor does he trace how such qualifications interacted with broader questions of villeinage, free tenure, or communal obligations. Researchers should treat his entry as a starting point for identification rather than a full account of the term's legal function.
Jurisdictional Note
Strictly a term of old English law. No parallel usage in Scots, Irish, or continental civil law sources is established by the available dictionary record.