Definition
A term appearing in old Latin legal records meaning a chop or exchange — that is, a barter or swap of property. The word belongs to the specialized Latin vocabulary of medieval English legal instruments and cartularies, where it denoted a transaction by which one party gave property and received different property in return, as distinguished from a sale for money.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with medieval English land records, monastic cartularies, or early property instruments may encounter this term in Latin-language documents. It signals an exchange transaction rather than a gift, grant, or purchase, which carries implications for tracing chain of title and understanding the consideration underlying a conveyance. Because the term derives from a very narrow stratum of documentary Latin used in cartularies — bound registers of charters maintained by ecclesiastical institutions — it will not appear in common-law pleading records or later English legal literature. If you encounter chuepa in a primary source, the document is almost certainly a medieval cartulary entry, and the transaction it describes should be read alongside any reciprocal grant naming the exchanged property. Burrill's citation to the Cartulary of Readings (Cartular. Radings, fol. 94) via Cowell is the traceable anchor for this term; researchers who need the primary text should seek that cartulary directly. Do not expect this word in Blackstone, Coke, or any post-medieval English legal source.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole shelf source to record this term, and its entry is brief: "L. Lat. In old records. Chop or exchange." Burrill traces the definition to Cowell's Interpreter, the early seventeenth-century legal glossary that collected obsolete and Latin terms from English records. Cowell himself cited the Cartulary of Readings as his source. The chain is therefore: cartulary → Cowell → Burrill. No other standard historical legal dictionary — not Jacob's Law Dictionary, not Tomlin's, not Bouvier's — appears to have carried this term independently, which suggests it was recognized even by historical lexicographers as a highly specialized archaism rather than a term of living legal art. The gloss "chop or exchange" is consistent with the broader family of exchange-related Latin terms in medieval English conveyancing, including excambium and permutatio, though chuepa appears to reflect a more colloquial or localized usage rather than formal Latinate drafting convention.
Jurisdictional Note
Encountered exclusively in English medieval records. No equivalent usage has been identified in Scots, Irish, or continental civil law sources. American legal materials have no occasion to use this term.