Definition
A Latin term of medieval English law meaning to chase, drive, or hunt. The word appears in two related senses in old English legal records:
1. To chase or hunt, as in the exercise of hunting rights over land. The term describes the physical act of pursuing game and, by extension, the legal right to do so.
2. To drive or compel, as in procedural contexts where a party is driven or forced to a particular legal position — most notably where a pleader is compelled to plead over or answer further.
The related Law French form CHACER (also rendered CHASER) carries both senses as well, appearing in Year Book records to describe both hunting activity and procedural compulsion.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a Year Book and medieval plea roll term. Researchers encountering it in pre-Tudor English legal records should be alert to which sense is operative: the hunting sense and the procedural sense share the same root but arise in entirely different legal contexts.
The hunting sense connects directly to the law of the chase — the body of medieval law governing hunting rights, forest law, and the franchises of free warren, free chase, and park. When chaceare appears in grants, charters, or pleadings touching on land use or royal forest rights, it identifies a claimed or disputed hunting privilege. The procedural sense, by contrast, appears in pleading records where a party has been driven past a demurrer or preliminary objection and must answer on the merits. Conflating the two readings in a manuscript source can send research in entirely the wrong direction.
The Year Book citations in Burrill (Mich. 5 Edw. III and Pasch. 10 Edw. III) are the anchor references for both senses. Researchers working with Year Books in Law French should note that the French form chacer is the more common surface form; the Latin chaceare appears more often in formal pleading records and enrolled instruments.
Because this term has no meaningful life in post-medieval English law or in American legal sources, it will not appear in nineteenth- or twentieth-century treatises except as a historical gloss. Searches in Law Mind should focus on Year Books, Bracton-era plea rolls, and forest law materials.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary dictionary source and treats the term concisely but usefully, linking the Latin chaceare to both the hunting and compulsion senses and cross-referencing the Law French chacer/chaser. Burrill quotes directly from two Year Book passages — the compulsion sense from Mich. 5 Edw. III and the hunting sense from Pasch. 10 Edw. III — which remain the best documentary anchors for researchers verifying usage.
Earlier English law dictionaries, including Cowell's Interpreter (cited by Burrill), recognize the hunting sense. Cowell's treatment, like Burrill's, is brief and treats the term as an item of antiquarian legal vocabulary rather than an operative legal concept.
No significant divergence between historical sources has been identified. The term is narrow enough that dictionary treatment across the shelf is consistent. What the historical dictionaries do not do is situate chaceare within the broader structure of forest law and hunting franchises — for that context, researchers must look beyond the dictionary literature to treatises on the law of the forest and to the Year Books themselves.
Jurisdictional Note
Chaceare is a term of medieval English law only. It has no recognized equivalent in Scots law, Irish law, or any American jurisdiction. It is encountered exclusively in English sources predating the Tudor period.