Definition
In old English law, to lop or top trees — that is, to cut off branches or upper growth from standing timber. The act described by the term is the physical trimming of trees, distinct from felling or uprooting them entirely. The related nominal form, colpatura, denotes the act or result of such lopping or topping.
Why It Matters in Research
Colpare is an obsolete Latin legal term that surfaces almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English property and forestry law. Researchers encountering the term in historical documents should treat it as belonging to the specialized vocabulary governing rights over timber and woodland — a body of law with its own intricate terminology. In that context, the precise distinction between lopping (colpare), felling, and estovers matters: different rights and different legal consequences attached to each form of taking wood from land. A tenant might hold a right to lop branches for fuel or fencing while having no right to fell the tree itself. Confusing colpare with terms covering outright cutting or removal of timber could misread the scope of a documented right.
The term appears in the corpus as a direct citation to Cowell's Interpreter, meaning primary appearances will likely be in glossaries, law dictionaries, and treatises rather than in case reporters. Researchers working backward from Burrill will find the chain leads to Cowell (John Cowell, The Interpreter, 1607), which is the proximate source. Cowell in turn drew on the Latin vocabulary of forest law and manorial custom. If your research involves forest rights, waste, estovers, or timber disputes in pre-modern English law, colpare and colpatura may appear in deeds, court rolls, or custom records as technical terms of art defining the permissible use of woodland.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is brief: it attributes the definition directly to Cowell and offers both the verbal form (colpare, to lop or top) and the nominal form (colpatura, a lopping or topping). No independent elaboration is provided, and Burrill makes no effort to situate the term within a broader doctrinal framework. This is consistent with the term's function — it is a precision vocabulary word for a physical act, not a term that anchors a legal doctrine.
No other historical dictionary sources were consulted for this entry. Researchers seeking fuller treatment should go directly to Cowell's Interpreter, which remains the foundational English legal glossary for terms of this type. Jacob's Law Dictionary and Blount's Nomo-Lexicon may also carry entries on related forestry and timber terminology that provide useful context for colpare even if they do not use the term itself.