Definition
A term from Law French, used in old English law to mean a plow. It appears almost exclusively in the compound phrase bestes des charues (beasts of the plow), referring to the draft animals — oxen, horses, and the like — employed in agricultural plowing. The term has no modern legal application and survives only in historical legal texts and the records of medieval English land and agricultural law.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter charue almost never in isolation. The operative phrase is bestes des charues, which carried legal significance in medieval English law as a protected category of agricultural property. Draft animals were frequently exempted from distress (the seizure of goods to compel performance of an obligation) under early English statutes and customs, on the theory that destroying the means of cultivation harmed the broader community, not merely the debtor. A researcher tracing exemptions from distress, agricultural tenure disputes, or the legal status of livestock in medieval records should recognize bestes des charues as a term of art pointing to this protective doctrine.
The phrase appears in Articuli super Cartas (the Articles upon the Charters, 28 Edw. I), a statute confirming and elaborating Magna Carta, and in Britton, the late thirteenth-century treatise on English law attributed to John le Breton. Both are significant primary sources for the Law Mind corpus. When reading these texts, bestes des charues will appear in contexts governing distraint and the limits of a lord's or creditor's power to seize a tenant's or debtor's property. Misreading the phrase as merely descriptive of livestock, rather than as a legal category triggering specific protections, is the core interpretive trap.
Because the term is Law French — not Latin and not modern English — it may be indexed inconsistently across historical sources. Variant spellings (charue, charrue) appear in different manuscript and printed traditions. Researchers using full-text search tools should run both forms.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in close agreement: Black's (both editions) and Burrill define charue simply as "a plow" and note the companion phrase bestes des charues. Burrill adds the most useful navigational information by citing Articuli super Cartas c. 12 and Britton c. 21, giving researchers a direct path to the primary sources in which the term functions as legal vocabulary rather than mere agricultural description. Black's editions omit those citations, limiting their usefulness for researchers who need to locate the term in context.
None of the three dictionaries elaborates on the legal doctrine underlying the protection of beasts of the plow. The entries treat charue as vocabulary rather than doctrine, which understates the term's significance. A researcher relying on the dictionary definition alone would know what a charue was without understanding why the law cared about bestes des charues specifically.
Jurisdictional Note
Charue and bestes des charues are terms of old English law with no recognized application in modern common law jurisdictions. The concept of exempting agricultural tools and working animals from distraint or execution has modern analogues in debtor exemption statutes across common law jurisdictions, but those statutes use contemporary terminology and carry no formal continuity with the medieval doctrine.