Definition
An obsolete Law French verb meaning to collect or gather. Encountered primarily in early English legal texts and Year Book materials, *coiller* appears in procedural and fiscal contexts where the act of collecting—whether rents, revenues, debts, or other obligations—required precise legal description. It is not a substantive legal doctrine but a term of legal art drawn directly from the French administrative and judicial vocabulary that shaped English common law practice in the medieval and early modern periods.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No standard English entry. The term has no living presence in ordinary English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. The word had already passed entirely out of general use by the nineteenth century.
*Editorial note:* Because *coiller* left no trace in common English, there is no gap between legal and popular meaning to navigate—the term exists solely within the Law French stratum of legal sources. Researchers encountering it should treat it as a technical term of art requiring translation rather than interpretation against any ordinary-language baseline.
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Why It Matters in Research
*Coiller* is a navigational hazard precisely because it is so inconspicuous. A researcher working through Britton, the Abridgments, or early Year Book materials may encounter the term without any signal that it carries legal weight. The danger is misreading it as mere descriptive filler—"he did collect"—rather than recognizing it as the operative verb that may define the legal act under examination.
The references in Burrill point to two distinct source layers: *Britton* (the late-thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman legal treatise attributed to Edward I's reign) and *Bendloes* (Reports of the Common Pleas from the sixteenth century). The appearance of the same term across both suggests *coiller* had durable procedural utility across roughly three centuries of English legal writing, which means researchers cannot assume the word carries identical weight in both contexts. Its meaning in a Britton passage touching feudal revenue collection may be thinner and more descriptive; its appearance in a Bendloes pleading context may be more technically operative.
Researchers in Law French sources should also be alert to variant spellings. Law French orthography was inconsistent across scribes and periods; *coiller* may appear as *coillier*, *coillere*, or in anglicized approximations. Index searches in digitized corpus sources that do not account for spelling variation will miss occurrences.
There is no modern statutory or case-law context in which *coiller* appears. Its research relevance is confined to historical legal sources, particularly English common law materials predating the formal suppression of Law French in pleading (Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1731).
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is spare: "*L. Fr.* To collect. Britt. c. 21. Bendl. pl. 26." This is consistent with Burrill's general approach to Law French terms—minimal gloss, source citation, no elaboration. The entry confirms the term's meaning and anchors it to two traceable sources but offers no discussion of context, procedural significance, or variation.
No other major historical legal dictionaries in common circulation—Bouvier, Black's early editions, Jacob's Law Dictionary, Tomlin's—appear to carry an entry for *coiller*. This absence is itself informative: the term was either too specialized, too archaic, or too narrowly attested to warrant inclusion in dictionaries aimed at practicing lawyers rather than antiquarian researchers. Burrill's inclusion of it reflects his unusually thorough engagement with Law French and Anglo-Norman source vocabulary.
The Britton reference (c. 21) and the Bendloes reference (pl. 26) are the primary anchors for any researcher wishing to trace the term in context. Neither source has been comprehensively digitized with full-text search in all available editions, so manual consultation of the relevant chapters remains advisable.
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Jurisdictional Note
*Coiller* is specific to English legal sources and has no recognized counterpart in Scottish, Irish, or civilian legal traditions. American legal materials do not use the term in any period.
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