Definition
Charter land is an archaic English land tenure term referring to land held by written instrument — that is, by charter or deed — as opposed to land held by custom or unwritten usage. The term derives from the Saxon concept of boc land (also written bocland or bookland), meaning land conveyed or held by a written document, in contrast to folk land, which was held under customary or communal arrangements without documentary title.
In practical terms, charter land was freehold land whose title rested on a formal written grant. Because the holder possessed documentary evidence of ownership, the land could be granted, devised, or otherwise disposed of in ways that customary tenure did not readily permit. The written charter was both the source and the proof of the holding.
Common Confusion
Charter land is easily conflated with copyhold, but the two are distinct and, historically, opposites. Copyhold was tenure evidenced only by the copy of an entry on a manorial court roll — an informal, custom-based record rather than a formal deed. Charter land, by contrast, was freehold tenure grounded in a written grant or deed. Burrill's entry makes this distinction explicit: freehold lands were called charter land precisely to distinguish them from copyhold. A researcher encountering the term in an old conveyancing or tenure dispute context should not read it as a precursor to or synonym for copyhold; it is the documentary-title alternative to that system.
Why It Matters in Research
Charter land is a term of historical significance only — it has no operative meaning in modern Anglo-American property law. Researchers will encounter it in:
Old English land records, medieval chronicles, and early treatises on tenure, where the Saxon boc land / folk land distinction is foundational context for understanding how documentary title developed.
Early American colonial land grant disputes, where English tenure vocabulary was sometimes imported into pleadings and opinions, particularly in the original colonies with ties to English common law practice.
Nineteenth-century English legal dictionaries and commentaries, where charter land appears as a term of art in discussions of freehold versus copyhold. Sources like Coke on Littleton and Blackstone's Commentaries (the authorities Burrill cites) remain the primary textual home of the term.
The main research trap is assuming the term carries any meaning beyond its historical descriptive function. Unlike some archaic tenure terms that were revived or redefined in statutory contexts, charter land dropped out of active legal usage as copyhold itself was gradually abolished in England (completed by the Law of Property Act 1922). It survived in dictionaries and historical scholarship, not in courts or conveyancing practice.
A secondary trap: do not confuse this term with the word "charter" in its modern senses — corporate charters, municipal charters, or vessel charter parties. Those uses share etymology but are conceptually unrelated to land tenure.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides a concise and accurate entry, cross-referencing Termes de la Ley, Coke's Littleton (6a), and Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Com. 90) — the three standard authorities for this point. Burrill correctly identifies charter land with the Saxon boc land and correctly draws the contrast to copyhold.
What Burrill's entry does not do is elaborate on the underlying tenure structure: why written title mattered, what the charter itself conveyed (typically a royal or lordly grant), or how the boc land / folk land distinction evolved across the Anglo-Saxon period and into the Norman settlement. For that depth, researchers should go directly to the Blackstone passage Burrill cites, and to scholarly histories of English land law such as Pollock and Maitland's The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, which treats the Saxon tenure categories in detail.
No meaningful divergence exists among the historical dictionaries on this term — it is treated consistently as an archaic synonym for freehold-by-deed, with Bocland as the cross-reference entry.
Jurisdictional Note
Charter land as a legal concept is specific to English legal history and has no operative counterpart in modern United States, Canadian, or Australian property law. American researchers may encounter the term in colonial-era documents or in nineteenth-century treatises importing English vocabulary, but it carries no distinct legal weight in any American jurisdiction.