Definition
"Condate" does not appear to be an established legal term. The source material attributed to Burrill's Law Dictionary contains what appears to be a fragment of a geographical glossary entry — listing place-names in England (Congleton in Cheshire, Crowland in Lincolnshire, Cumberland) — rather than a definition of any term named "Condate." No recognized legal meaning for "Condate" has been identified in the Law Mind corpus or in standard legal reference works.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "Condate" in historical legal documents should treat it as a possible Latinized place-name rather than a term of legal art. Historical legal records — particularly writs, pleadings, and ecclesiastical documents drafted in Law Latin — routinely rendered English place-names in Latinized or Romanized form. "Condate" was a Roman place-name applied to several sites in Britain and Gaul (including a location near present-day Northwich in Cheshire), and could appear in historical instruments as a geographic designator rather than as a term carrying substantive legal meaning.
The fragment preserved in Burrill appears to come from a glossary of Latinized English place-names, likely drawn from or related to sources such as Reg. Orig. (Registrum Omnium Brevium), a formulary of original writs. In that context, identifying the geographic referent — not parsing legal doctrine — is the correct research move. Cross-referencing with historical atlases, county histories, and the Registrum Omnium Brevium will be more productive than searching legal treatises for a doctrinal definition.
If you have encountered "Condate" in a primary source and are uncertain of its meaning in context, consider: (1) whether it appears in a caption or venue clause, where it would identify a place of jurisdiction; (2) whether the surrounding text is Latin and the document is pre-1733, when Latin pleading was abolished in English courts; and (3) whether it may be a transcription error for another term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary entry, as retrieved, does not define "Condate" as a legal term. The entry is a fragment of a geographical glossary listing Latinized place-names — Congleton (Cheshire), Crowland (Lincolnshire), and Cumberland — drawn from the Registrum Omnium Brevium. No definition, legal usage, or doctrinal content is supplied. Other major historical law dictionaries — including Bouvier, Black's early editions, and Tomlin's Law Dictionary — do not contain an entry for "Condate" as a term of law. The absence across these sources is itself informative: this is not a lost term of art awaiting rediscovery but most likely a geographic reference that has been misidentified as a headword.