Definition
A Latin term appearing in old English legal records meaning a goshawk — a large bird of prey prized for falconry. The term appears most commonly in the compound phrase *aeria austurcorum*, meaning eyries or nesting sites of goshawks. In the medieval legal context, rights to goshawk eyries were a recognized form of property interest, typically attached to forest lands and subject to royal or manorial regulation.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter *austurcus* almost exclusively in medieval English forest law records, manorial surveys, and texts governing the royal forest regime. The term has no modern legal application and functions as a specimen of the highly specialized Latin vocabulary of the Anglo-Norman legal order. Its significance lies less in the word itself than in what it indexes: the elaborate legal framework surrounding falconry rights, which were treated as valuable incorporeal hereditaments capable of being granted, reserved, and litigated.
When working through Fleta or similar institutional texts, researchers should be alert to the distinction between rights to the birds themselves and rights to the eyries — the nesting sites where birds were taken and trained. The phrase *aeria austurcorum* refers specifically to the eyries, not to ownership of goshawks at large. This distinction matters when reconstructing what a specific grant or reservation actually conveyed.
The term also appears in materials touching on the forest pleas and the jurisdiction of forest courts, where unauthorized taking of goshawks or disturbance of eyries could give rise to liability. Understanding this cluster of related terms — covering falcons, hawks, eyries, and warren rights — is essential for accurate reading of medieval property instruments and plea rolls.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core entry, relying on Cowell's *Interpreter* for the basic definition and citing Fleta, Book 2, Chapter 41, Section 7 for the phrase *aeria austurcorum*. Burrill's treatment is brief and purely definitional, which is characteristic of his handling of obsolete Latin terms of limited continuing legal relevance. No substantive legal analysis accompanies the entry.
Cowell's *Interpreter* (1607), cited by Burrill, was one of the standard reference points for archaic legal Latin in the common law tradition. His treatment of terms drawn from the medieval forest law vocabulary reflects the period when such terms were still practically meaningful for reading older instruments, even if no longer operative in contemporary law.
Fleta itself, a late thirteenth-century institutional text modeled on Bracton, treats goshawk eyries in the context of the rights and perquisites associated with royal forests and the management of wildlife within them. This reflects the broader medieval principle that certain animals — including birds of prey — occupied a privileged legal category, with rights over them vested by default in the crown or its grantees rather than in ordinary landowners.
No other standard historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus carry a discrete entry for *austurcus*, which is consistent with the term's extreme specialization and obsolescence.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to medieval English law and has no recognized counterpart or application in Scottish, Irish, or continental legal systems as reflected in the common law dictionary tradition.