Definition
Caputia is the Latin plural of caputium (also spelled capucium), a term from old English land law denoting headlands — the strips or portions of land at the head or end of a ploughed field. A single such strip was a caputium; multiple such strips, or a collective reference to the head-portions of an agricultural holding, were caputia. The term derives from the Latin caput, meaning head, applied in an agrarian context to the uppermost or terminal portions of arable strips in the open-field system.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Caputia is a term of medieval conveyancing and land description, encountered almost exclusively in early English charters, surveys, and records of manorial holdings. Researchers working with pre-modern land grants, extents, or terriers — particularly those predating systematic land registration — may encounter caputia as a descriptor of the physical boundaries or components of a holding. Its significance is positional and agrarian: caputia defined where plough-strips terminated, and these head-strips could be the subject of separate grants, reservations, or disputes.
The term connects to the broader vocabulary of open-field agriculture that saturates medieval English land records. A researcher unfamiliar with this vocabulary risks misreading a boundary description or failing to recognize that a caputium or caputia represents a discrete portion of land with legal standing as a conveyable unit. Cross-referencing Cowell's Interpreter — the source cited by Burrill — is advisable when working with original documents, as Cowell situates the term within its precise agrarian and conveyancing context. Burrill's cross-reference to buttum (a related term for the short strip at the end of a furlong) is also a useful navigational pointer: the two terms appear in related contexts and occasionally in proximity within the same document.
This term does not appear in general use after the decline of open-field systems and is absent from modern legal sources. If encountered in a document, it is a reliable indicator of medieval or early modern English provenance.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry in the Law Mind corpus for this term. Burrill defines caputia as the plural of caputium and glosses the singular as "a head of land; a headland," citing Cowell. The entry is brief, as befits a term with narrow technical application. Burrill's cross-reference to buttum is the key editorial contribution: it situates caputia within a family of related agrarian boundary terms and directs the researcher toward a companion entry for further context.
No elaboration on the legal consequences of caputia — their conveyance, tenure, or role in boundary disputes — appears in Burrill or in the secondary sources he cites. The entry reflects the state of nineteenth-century legal lexicography on archaic land terms: accurate as far as it goes, but thin on the practical legal implications that a medieval practitioner would have understood. Researchers requiring more than a gloss should consult specialized works on open-field systems and Anglo-Norman conveyancing practice directly.
---
Jurisdictional Note
Caputia is a term of English land law and is not encountered in other common law or civil law jurisdictions. Its relevance is confined to English legal history, particularly records of manorial and agrarian land tenure predating enclosure.
---