Definition
Aumone (also rendered aumône) is a Law French term meaning alms. In its legal context, it refers to a form of tenure by which land was held in exchange for spiritual services — primarily prayer, religious observance, or charitable acts — rather than for secular obligations such as military service or rent. The term appears in medieval English land law as a variant form of almoin or almoign and carries the same substantive meaning. Two principal tenure forms appear in the sources:
1. Tener en aumone (tenure in alms): The general category of holding land on the condition that the tenant perform spiritual or charitable duties for the benefit of the grantor's soul or estate.
2. Fraunche aumone (frank almoin; free alms): The purest form of spiritual tenure, in which land was granted to a religious house or ecclesiastical body free of secular services, with the only obligation being prayer and religious observance for the donor. No temporal accountability to any secular court attached to the tenure.
Common Confusion
Aumone, almoin, and almoign are variant spellings of the same underlying concept and should be treated as equivalent when researching historical sources. The spelling shifts between Law French and Latin-influenced forms across manuscripts and printed abridgments. Researchers encountering any of these forms are looking at the same tenure. Frank almoin (fraunche aumone) is sometimes loosely equated with the broader category of spiritual tenure, but it is technically a distinct subtype: the hallmark of frank almoin is freedom from secular court jurisdiction over the tenure's obligations, which sets it apart from other alms-based tenures where some secular accountability could attach.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term encountered almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English land law sources. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should note several navigational points:
Spelling variation is the primary obstacle. Aumone, aumône, almoin, almoign, and the Latin eleemosyna all appear across sources referring to the same concept. Historical indexes and abridgments are inconsistent in which form they use as the headword. Searching under any single spelling will miss sources indexed under the others.
The significance of frank almoin in jurisdictional disputes is substantial. Because land held in frank almoin was answerable only in ecclesiastical courts (not royal courts) for questions touching the tenure's spiritual obligations, it sat at the intersection of the long contest between royal and church jurisdiction in medieval England. Sources touching this tenure often appear in the context of writs of right, the assize of novel disseisin, and the broader question of what courts had competence over ecclesiastical holdings.
Brittон (Britton), cited by Burrill as the authority here, is a late-thirteenth-century treatise on English law written in Law French, attributed to or associated with the reign of Edward I. Researchers using Burrill's citation to "Britt. c. 66" should locate Britton in the corpus to find the original discussion of this tenure in context. The treatise is a primary source for Law French tenure terminology and should be consulted alongside Bracton for the same period.
By the time of Blackstone's Commentaries, frank almoin was treated as a surviving but largely antiquarian tenure form, its practical significance having declined sharply after the Statute of Quia Emptores (1290) and the broader dissolution of the feudal tenure system. Researchers should not assume that descriptions of aumone tenure in early sources reflect conditions still operative in later periods.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is brief but accurate in its core identification: aumone is a Law French form of almoin/almoign, and Burrill correctly identifies the two principal tenure forms — general tenure in alms and frank almoin — with citation to Britton. The entry does not elaborate on the legal consequences of the tenure distinction, the jurisdictional implications of frank almoin, or the relationship between aumone tenure and ecclesiastical courts, all of which are necessary for substantive research. Burrill's function here is essentially translational and cross-referential rather than analytical. For fuller treatment, researchers should look beyond the dictionary to the tenure law chapters of Britton itself, and to secondary sources treating the ecclesiastical tenure system of medieval England.
Jurisdictional Note
Aumone tenure is specific to the English feudal land system and its historical antecedents. It has no operative legal significance in modern common law jurisdictions and appears in contemporary research contexts only in historical, property law history, or ecclesiastical law scholarship.