Definition
An avowterer is a historical English legal term for a man who engages in ongoing adultery with a married woman — specifically, a man who continues in an adulterous relationship with her, as distinguished from a single or isolated act. The term is obsolete and appears only in archaic legal texts and early common law materials.
Common Confusion
Three related terms circulate in old English law and are easily conflated: avowterer, advowtry (also spelled advoutry or avoutry), and adulterer. An adulterer is the general term for any person who commits adultery. Advowtry (see Burrill's cross-reference) names the offense itself — the act or continuing state of adultery. Avowterer is the specific agent noun: the man who is the other party in that continuing offense with a married woman. Researchers encountering any of these terms in historical sources should check which precise concept is intended, as the distinctions carry different legal consequences in the ecclesiastical and common law contexts where these terms operated.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is unlikely to appear in American legal sources. Its natural habitat is pre-modern English ecclesiastical court records, early common law pleading materials, and legal dictionaries and glossaries deriving from Termes de la Ley — the foundational early modern English legal glossary that all four source dictionaries cite directly. Researchers working in English ecclesiastical law, the history of adultery as a legal wrong, or the reception of English common law vocabulary in early American sources may encounter it.
The key navigational point: the term marks a specific legal status within a body of law that treated continuing adultery as distinct from a one-time act, with different implications for property rights, inheritance, and ecclesiastical discipline. The Statute of Westminster II (1285) and related medieval statutes touching on dower rights and actions by husbands against adulterers form the broader legal backdrop, though the term itself functions more as descriptive vocabulary than as a term of art in a formal statutory scheme.
Burrill's entry is the broadest, treating avowterer simply as a synonym for adulterer generally. The Black's and Bouvier's entries are more precise, preserving the element of continuity — the ongoing relationship rather than the single act. That distinction matters if the term appears in a pleading or record and the nature of the offense must be reconstructed.
Do not expect this term in American case law or statutes. Its appearance in American legal dictionaries reflects the tradition of cataloguing inherited English legal vocabulary rather than active domestic use.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries trace the term to Termes de la Ley, and none offers independent analysis beyond that citation. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's are in near-identical agreement: an avowterer is the adulterer with whom a married woman continues in adultery, preserving the element of ongoing conduct. Burrill's is the outlier, offering the simpler gloss of "adulterer" without the continuity element and directing the reader to Advowtry for further context. This divergence is minor but worth noting: Burrill's treatment suggests the term had already lost precise technical definition by the time these dictionaries were compiled, collapsing back into the general concept of adultery. None of the four dictionaries provide substantive legal analysis, which accurately reflects the term's status as archaic vocabulary rather than a living term of art.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively English in origin and application. It does not appear as an operative term in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. Its relevance in any American legal context is historical and lexicographic only.