Definition
Clamare is a Latin verb used in medieval English law with several distinct procedural and evidentiary meanings. It does not correspond to a single modern legal concept but rather served as a versatile term across different legal contexts in the common law's formative period.
1. To claim or demand as of right. The most frequent legal use: to assert a legal entitlement to property or a remedy. The present participle clamans (claiming) and genitive clamantis (of the claimant) appear in writs, pleadings, and rolls identifying the party pressing a claim.
2. To complain or bring a grievance. Used in early pleading contexts to describe the initiation of a complaint before a court or lord, particularly in actions touching land or personal injury.
3. To proclaim or declare publicly. In a procedural sense, clamare describes the formal act of public announcement — causing something to be cried aloud so that it becomes generally known. The phrase facias clamari et sciri (you shall cause to be proclaimed and known) appears in writs directing an officer to give public notice.
4. To cry, as a newborn child. A specialized evidentiary use: whether an infant "clamavit" (cried) at birth was legally significant in certain questions of inheritance and the status of posthumous children, as crying was taken as evidence of live birth.
Common Confusion
Clamare is the root of several related but distinct Latin terms that appear independently in old English legal records. Clamans is the active participle (the claiming party), clamantis is its genitive form, and clamor is the noun form denoting the claim or outcry itself. Researchers encountering any of these in source texts should not treat them as interchangeable with clamare but should note which grammatical form is used, as the form often signals the party's procedural role or the stage of proceedings being described.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a reading tool rather than a doctrine. Researchers working with Bracton, Glanvill, Fleta, or medieval plea rolls will encounter clamare and its derivatives frequently, often without translation or gloss. Recognizing which sense applies in context is essential to understanding what the text describes:
The claiming sense (clamare as asserting right) connects directly to the vocabulary of real property actions — novel disseisin, mort d'ancestor, and related possessory writs — where identifying the clamans is often the first step in parsing a medieval pleading.
The proclamation sense links to procedural requirements for public notice, relevant to understanding how writs commanded sheriffs to act and how outlawry or forfeiture proceedings were initiated.
The crying-infant sense appears in a narrow but consequential inheritance context. Because live birth determined whether a posthumous child could inherit, whether an infant cried became a fact in dispute. The cry was the audible, publicly verifiable signal of live birth. Researchers examining inheritance disputes or dower claims in medieval sources may encounter this usage without obvious modern parallel.
Burrill's is the primary entry point in the Law Mind corpus for this term. Researchers should follow citations to Bracton, Fleta, and Glanvill for extended procedural context, as Burrill quotes these sources directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole Law Mind corpus entry for clamare and offers the most complete account of the term's range. Burrill distinguishes four functional meanings — claiming, complaining, proclaiming, and the infant's cry — supported by citations to Spelman, the Registrum Omnium Brevium, Glanvill, Bracton, and Fleta. These citations are precise and traceable, which is notable given how loosely Latin legal terms were sometimes treated in nineteenth-century dictionaries.
What Burrill does not provide is any synthesis of how these meanings relate to one another or how they evolved across the medieval period. The term appears to have been functionally capacious from early on — a single verb covering the act of asserting, announcing, and evidencing — and Burrill's entry reflects that range without explaining it. Researchers should not assume the meanings are historically separated or that different senses belong to different periods; the sources Burrill cites span Glanvill (late twelfth century) through Fleta (late thirteenth century) without suggesting any narrowing of meaning.
No modern legal dictionary is expected to carry this term, as it has no surviving operative function in contemporary law.
Jurisdictional Note
Clamare is a term of English medieval law specifically. It does not appear as a term of art in Scots law, civil law, or canon law sources in the same form, though cognate vocabulary exists in those traditions. Researchers working in Welsh, Irish, or continental medieval records should verify whether the term carried equivalent meaning in those jurisdictions before drawing comparisons.