Definition
In old English law, a plough. The term appears in the Statute of Westminster I (1275), chapter 1, in the context of early medieval property and agricultural law, where implements of husbandry such as ploughs held legal significance in matters of distraint, tenure, and the protection of farming equipment from seizure. The term belongs to Law French, the Anglo-Norman legal dialect used in English courts and statutes from the Norman Conquest through the early modern period.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To work by the day, without being a regularly hired servant; to do small jobs; to char.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A narrow street. [Provincial English]
Neither the common nor the provincial meaning bears any relation to the legal term. The legal CHARE is a Law French agricultural noun — a plough — wholly distinct from the English verb meaning casual day labor and the dialectal English noun for a narrow lane. A researcher encountering the word outside a legal context should not assume any connection to the term's legal meaning.
Common Confusion
CHARE (a plough) and CHARETTE (a cart) appear in the same statutory passage in Westminster I and are visually similar in Law French. They are distinct implements, and the legal rules attaching to each may differ. Always verify which term is actually present in the source being read.
Why It Matters in Research
CHARE is a narrow, historically specific term whose research value lies almost entirely in reading early English statutes and the legal texts that gloss them. Several traps await the unwary researcher.
First, the word is orthographically unstable in manuscript and early print sources. Law French vocabulary was subject to considerable spelling variation across copyists and editions, and CHARE may appear in related or variant forms depending on the source. Researchers working with transcriptions of Westminster I or contemporary commentaries should search broadly.
Second, CHARE must not be confused with its near neighbor in Burrill: CHARETTE (also CHARET, CHARRET), meaning a cart. Both terms appear in the same statutory context — Statute of Westminster I, chapter 1 — and both designate agricultural implements. A plough (CHARE) and a cart (CHARETTE) carried distinct legal significance in medieval distraint practice, where the law protected certain tools of husbandry from seizure. Conflating the two misreads what implement is at issue.
Third, researchers using Burrill as a jumping-off point should note that his entry is brief and points to primary sources rather than elaborating doctrine. The statute itself and Britton's legal treatise (cited by Burrill for CHARETTE) are the next stop for anyone needing context beyond a bare gloss.
Finally, Law French terms of this era are largely absent from modern legal usage. CHARE will not surface in contemporary case law or secondary literature outside historical legal scholarship. Its relevance is confined to the study of medieval English agrarian law, early statutory interpretation, and the vocabulary of Law French.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the sole Law Mind shelf source covering this term, and his entry is intentionally spare: a one-line gloss identifying CHARE as a plough, followed by a statutory citation to Westminster I, c. 1. This is consistent with Burrill's general approach to obsolete Law French terms — locate the primary source, provide the English equivalent, and move on.
The entry gains meaning when read alongside Burrill's immediately adjacent entry for CHARETTE (a cart), which shares the same statutory citation and belongs to the same conceptual cluster of medieval agricultural vocabulary. Together they suggest that Westminster I's opening chapter engaged with the legal treatment of farm implements — a point that later commentators on early distraint law developed more fully than Burrill's dictionary format permits.
No other historical dictionary on the Law Mind shelf addresses CHARE. Researchers needing deeper treatment of the statutory context should look to scholarly editions of the Statute of Westminster I and to secondary literature on medieval English distraint and husbandry law.