Definition
A chase, in English law, is a franchise or liberty granted by the Crown to a subject, conferring the exclusive right to hunt wild beasts and game within a defined district of land, regardless of who holds title to the underlying soil. The grantee of the chase may hunt freely within the district and may exclude all others from doing the same.
A chase occupies a middle position in the English hierarchy of hunting franchises, ranking below a forest (which was the Crown's own preserve, subject to forest law and forest courts) and above a park (which required enclosure). Unlike a royal forest, a chase is held by a private subject rather than the Crown, and it is therefore not subject to the special forest laws and courts administered under the Crown's prerogative. Unlike a park, a chase need not be enclosed.
The term carries two related but distinct senses in historical legal sources:
1. The franchise or privilege itself — the right of hunting within the district.
2. The physical district within which that privilege runs — the land set apart and protected for that purpose.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To pursue rapidly; to follow or hunt something or someone. Also used as a surname and given name derived from a medieval nickname for a hunter.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "To pursue for the purpose of killing or taking, as an enemy, or game; to hunt." Also, to follow compellingly, to drive away.
The legal term and the common verb share the same root in the act of hunting, but the legal meaning is wholly distinct in form and function. "Chase" in law is not an act — it is a static franchise, a territorial right frozen in a grant. A researcher encountering "chase" in a historical legal document should not read it as describing the activity of pursuit but as identifying a species of property right in land-use and game.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Royal chase: A chase retained by the Crown, distinguished from a chase granted to a subject. Though governed by fewer formal laws than a royal forest, a royal chase carries greater protections than a subject's chase.
Subject's chase: The standard form — a franchise granted out by the Crown, vesting the hunting right in a private lord over a defined territory. Not subject to forest law.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in English common law materials, particularly sources predating the nineteenth-century game law reforms, will encounter "chase" as a technical property term that is easily misread. Three traps are worth flagging.
First, temporal displacement: The chase as a legal institution is almost entirely a creature of medieval and early modern English law. By the time American legal dictionaries were being compiled in the late nineteenth century, the term had become a historical relic in practice, though it survived in dictionaries because of its presence in Blackstone and the classical common law sources. Researchers should not expect to find active chase franchises in American or post-reform English case law.
Second, the forest/park/chase hierarchy: Understanding where a chase sits in the hierarchy of English hunting franchises matters for reading period sources accurately. Blackstone's treatment in Book 2, Chapter 3 remains the essential orientation. Arguments about rights, trespass, and royal prerogative in historical cases often turn on which category of franchise is at issue. Misidentifying a forest as a chase, or vice versa, will distort the legal analysis being read.
Third, the land/right distinction: Because a chase is a franchise running over land the grantor may not own, historical documents may describe the same territory in terms of both freehold ownership and chase rights without contradiction. A researcher must hold both concepts simultaneously. The chase right and the fee in the soil could and often did reside in different persons.
In the Law Mind corpus, chase is most likely to appear in materials touching English real property law, game law, manorial rights, or commentary on Blackstone. Cross-reference to entries on FOREST, PARK, GAME, and WARREN will usually be necessary for full context.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries exhibit strong agreement on the core definition, which they largely derive from Blackstone (2 Bl. Comm. 414–416). Black's (both editions) and Bouvier repeat the Blackstone formulation nearly verbatim, confirming that this was a settled, received definition by the late nineteenth century rather than a contested one.
Rapalje & Lawrence contributes the most useful analytical addition: the explicit statement that a chase "has no peculiar laws or courts," which sharpens the distinction from a forest. This is the functional differentiator that mattered in practice — forest law was an elaborate and burdensome system; the absence of that system in a chase had real consequences for those living and hunting within the district.
Bouvier adds the useful gloss that "a chase is a franchise granted to a subject, and hence is not subject to the forest laws," making the public/private nature of the distinction explicit in a way that Black's (1st ed.) does not.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law simply cross-references GAME, which is accurate as far as it goes but unhelpful for a researcher needing to understand the franchise structure. Historical dictionaries generally do not address the decline of the chase as an institution or its effective obsolescence by the time these dictionaries were compiled — that historical gap is worth noting.
Jurisdictional Note
The chase as a legal institution is specific to English law and did not transplant to American jurisdictions. American law developed its own framework for hunting rights, game laws, and public land access. Researchers should treat "chase" as a term of English legal history when it appears in American sources; it will almost always be appearing in the context of common law exposition drawn from English authority rather than describing any domestic American right.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: GAME LAWS; FOREST (English Law); MANORIAL RIGHTS