Definition
A Latin term appearing in old English legal records meaning a cornfield or field of grain. The term has no independent substantive legal significance; it functions as a descriptive term encountered in medieval land records, conveyances, boundary descriptions, and petitions where agricultural land is being identified or measured.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter campertum almost exclusively in transcriptions or calendars of medieval English records — particularly petitions, inquisitions post mortem, manorial surveys, and conveyancing documents from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Burrill's citation to a Petition in Parliament from 30 Edward I (1301–02) is a useful anchor for the term's historical register.
The practical research challenge is terminological: medieval land records employed a dense vocabulary of Latin field descriptors — campertum, pratum (meadow), pastura (pasture), boscus (wood), cultura (arable strip) — and confusing these will produce errors in reconstructing landholdings or interpreting boundary clauses. If you encounter campertum in a document, the surrounding context will typically indicate whether the reference is to an open-field arable strip, an enclosed grain field, or a larger agricultural unit.
The term is not a term of art in the sense of carrying legal consequences of its own; its significance is entirely descriptive and locative. It will not appear in pleadings, jury charges, or statutory materials. Its natural home is the record room, not the courtroom.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries are in complete agreement: campertum means a cornfield or field of grain. Bouvier and Black both cite Cowell's Interpreter (1607), a standard reference for Law Latin and old English legal terminology. Burrill adds the specific primary-source citation to a Petition in Parliament from 30 Edward I and references Blount's Nomo-Lexicon (1670), giving the term slightly more archival grounding than the other entries. No source offers substantive legal analysis because none is required — the term carries no doctrinal weight.
One limitation worth noting: none of the historical dictionaries address the term's relationship to field systems. Medieval English agriculture organized arable land into open-field strips and furlongs, and the word campertum may describe a discrete strip, a furlong-unit, or an entire cultivated field depending on context. Researchers working with primary sources should not assume the term maps cleanly onto modern land-parcel concepts.