Definition
An obsolete law French term with two related meanings found in early English legal records: (1) goods, money, riches, or substance — that is, a person's material wealth or property; and (2) a bargain or financial arrangement, including a loan or advance of money on credit. The related Latin form chevantia (also chevancia) appears in old records specifically to denote a loan or advance of money upon credit. The phrase à faire chevances meant to borrow or to make bargains.
Why It Matters in Research
Chevance is an archaic term unlikely to appear outside medieval and early modern English legal records, Year Books, or documents in law French. Researchers working in pre-modern property, debt, or commercial records may encounter it as a descriptor of a party's general wealth or as part of a lending transaction. The dual sense — general substance or wealth on one hand, and a specific credit bargain on the other — means context governs interpretation. A document describing a party's chevance may be inventorying assets, while one describing a chevance as a transaction likely means a loan or arrangement for money on credit.
The Latinized variant chevantia or chevancia is the form more likely to appear in formal record Latin rather than in law French pleading or narrative sources. Researchers should search both spellings and their variant forms, as medieval scribal practice was inconsistent. Neither form survives into modern legal usage, so chevance and chevantia function as terminus technical markers for document dating and provenance — their presence suggests a pre-modern English or Anglo-Norman source.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term, and its entry relies on Kelham's dictionary of Norman-French (Robert Kelham, A Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language, 1779) and on Cowell's Interpreter for the Latin form. Burrill records chevance as encompassing both general property concepts (goods, money, riches) and the transactional concept of a bargain or loan arrangement. The chevantia entry sharpens the transactional meaning specifically toward a loan or advance on credit.
No significant divergence exists among historical sources; the term is narrow and archaic enough that it did not generate substantial legal commentary. The limitation of the historical record is that chevance is defined but rarely illustrated with extended doctrinal context — it appears as a vocabulary entry rather than a term generating case law or treatise analysis. Researchers should not expect to find a body of decisions interpreting the term.