CHOCHAUNT

Definition

An archaic Law French term meaning "lying down." A variant spelling of couchant, used in medieval English legal records to describe livestock or animals found lying down on another's land. The term appears almost exclusively in the formula chochauntz et levauntz — the equivalent of couchant and levant — describing animals that have been on another's land long enough to have lain down and risen again, establishing the host landowner's right to impound them.

Common Confusion

CHOCHAUNT vs. CHOP-CHURCH: Burrill's Law Dictionary runs these two terms together in a single entry, which can mislead a reader skimming quickly. They are entirely unrelated. Chochaunt is a spelling variant of couchant, a term tied to animal trespass and land rights. Chop-church (also chop-chirch, choppechurch) is a separate and distinct term referring to parsons who exchanged or traded their benefices — a practice viewed with enough disfavor that the word functioned effectively as a pejorative title in pleading. A researcher encountering either term in a Year Book folio should confirm which entry they are actually reading before drawing any conclusions.

Why It Matters in Research

This term will appear only in Year Book materials and early common law pleading records, primarily from the reigns of Edward II and immediately surrounding periods. Researchers should treat chochaunt as a purely paleographic and orthographic problem: the substantive legal doctrine is couchant and levant, and any research on the underlying law should proceed under that heading. The significance of the formula chochauntz et levauntz lies in its threshold function. The requirement that animals be found both lying and rising on another's land was the legal marker determining whether the landowner had a right to impound the beasts as damage feasant. An animal merely passing through did not meet the test. This distinction shaped early common law treatment of animal trespass and distress. Because Law French spelling was not standardized, researchers working through Year Book transcriptions or manuscript sources may encounter this term spelled differently across folios and editions. Variant spellings of couchant in the Year Books include couchant, couschant, chochaunt, and related forms. A search limited to any single spelling risks missing parallel passages. Modern indexes to the Year Books will generally normalize to couchant, but the original folios will not. The Yearb. T. 1 Edw. II. 9 reference in Burrill is one of the few anchoring citations for this precise spelling. Researchers should treat it as a terminus for confirming the variant rather than as a substantive authority on the couchant and levant doctrine itself.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical source in the Law Mind corpus covering this term, and its treatment is brief. Burrill defines chochaunt as "lying down" and identifies it as an old form of couchant, citing Yearb. T. 1 Edw. II. 9 and the formula chochauntz et levauntz. No independent doctrinal discussion is provided, which is appropriate given that chochaunt is a spelling variant rather than a substantive legal concept in its own right. No other shelf sources in the Law Mind corpus address this term independently. Researchers seeking doctrinal treatment of couchant and levant — the operative legal concept — will need to look beyond this entry to sources treating distress, damage feasant, and animal trespass under their modern or normalized headings.

Jurisdictional Note

The term is confined to early English common law and has no application in modern U.S. or Commonwealth jurisdictions. The doctrine of couchant and levant from which it derives has been substantially displaced by modern livestock trespass statutes.

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