Definition
A common law criminal offense defined as carnal copulation against nature. Historically encompassed two categories: (1) sexual intercourse between a human and an animal (bestiality), and (2) sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex, or unnatural intercourse between a man and a woman. The offense derived from ecclesiastical law before being incorporated into English statute and common law, and was a capital felony under early English law.
In modern legal usage, buggery survives primarily as a historical term. Where it persists in statute, it typically refers to anal intercourse, either without consent (in which case it overlaps with sexual assault or rape) or, in older frameworks, consensually between adults of the same sex. Most common law jurisdictions have replaced buggery with modernized sexual offense categories that focus on consent and harm rather than the nature of the act.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Anal sex; any sexual act deemed against nature, such as homosexuality, bestiality, or necrophilia; also used colloquially in British English to mean a broken or damaged condition.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Unnatural sexual intercourse; sodomy.
The common and legal meanings are closely aligned in their historical framing, but diverge in an important way: common usage has increasingly narrowed buggery to anal intercourse specifically, while the legal definition historically swept broader, encompassing bestiality as a distinct and equally weighted category. A researcher reading a historical indictment for buggery cannot assume the charge involved human parties only.
Common Confusion
Buggery and sodomy are frequently used interchangeably in both historical and modern sources, but the relationship between them is not one of strict synonymy. In some historical frameworks, sodomy was the broader ecclesiastical category, with buggery functioning as its common law criminal expression. In others, sodomy was broader still, encompassing acts (such as oral intercourse) that buggery did not reach. Some statutes used the terms as exact equivalents; others did not. Several historical dictionaries resolve the question by simply cross-referencing one to the other without explanation — a practice that papers over genuine definitional instability.
Researchers should not assume that buggery and sodomy are coextensive in any given jurisdiction or period without examining the governing statute or case law directly.
Why It Matters in Research
This term requires careful attention to period, jurisdiction, and statutory context.
Temporal traps: The scope of buggery shifted significantly across time. Early common law definitions, following Coke's Institutes, treated both bestiality and male-male intercourse as equally within the offense. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some jurisdictions narrowed the term by statute to anal intercourse only, while others retained the broader formulation. A definition accurate for 1769 may not describe the operative law in 1869 or 1969.
Decriminalization patterns: Many jurisdictions decriminalized consensual adult same-sex conduct beginning in the mid-twentieth century, sometimes by repealing buggery statutes specifically, sometimes by judicial invalidation of sodomy laws more broadly. In the United States, Lawrence v. Texas (2003) effectively invalidated criminal prohibitions on consensual adult sodomy, though the case did not use the term buggery. In England and Wales, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 abolished the specific offense of buggery and replaced it with a consent-based framework. Researchers working with post-decriminalization sources must identify which statutory regime was in force.
Indictment and pleading precision: Historical indictments for buggery often employed highly formulaic language derived from Coke, describing the act as "against the order of nature" without specifying conduct. Courts were divided on how much specificity was required. Where a case turns on the sufficiency of an indictment, the precise language used — and the jurisdiction's pleading requirements at the time — will matter.
Corpus connections: Buggery appears in Law Mind sources connected to sodomy doctrine, ecclesiastical court jurisdiction, colonial criminal law, capital punishment history, and the reform of sexual offense statutes. Researchers working on any of these threads will encounter the term and need to situate it within the specific legal framework under examination.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus handle buggery inconsistently, which is itself informative.
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) provides the most substantive definitions, drawing directly on Coke's Institutes (3 Inst. 58) and the reports in 12 Coke 36. The definition in both editions is nearly identical: carnal copulation against nature, covering both bestiality and same-sex intercourse. This framing is explicitly Cokean and reflects the common law formulation as it had been received and transmitted for centuries. The second edition adds case citations — Ausman v. Veal and Commonwealth v. J. — anchoring the definition to American judicial application.
Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Anderson's Dictionary of Law all simply cross-reference sodomy without independent definition. This is legally significant: it signals that these compilers treated buggery and sodomy as functionally equivalent for their purposes, but it leaves the researcher without guidance on whether any distinction was intended. Bouvier's in particular was a widely consulted practitioner reference; its bare cross-reference reflects a convention of conflation rather than a considered analytical position.
None of the historical dictionaries address the question of decriminalization, consent, or the later statutory reforms that would transform this area of law — a gap that is expected given their publication dates but must be kept in mind by any researcher working in twentieth- or twenty-first-century sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Buggery as a distinct statutory offense was abolished in England and Wales by the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Many U.S. states had already repealed or allowed to lapse their sodomy and buggery statutes before Lawrence v. Texas (2003) rendered criminal prohibitions on consensual adult sodomy constitutionally unenforceable. Some Commonwealth jurisdictions retain buggery as a statutory term, and the scope of the offense — particularly whether consent is a defense and whether it applies to opposite-sex couples — varies by jurisdiction.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Sodomy
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Sexual Offenses (Historical)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Common Law Felonies