Definition
A corner or angle. A Latin term appearing in medieval English legal records, particularly documents associated with the perambulation and demarcation of forest boundaries and landholdings. The term identifies a physical turning point or angular juncture in the description of land — a positional marker within a metes-and-bounds style legal description.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering CORNERUM will find it almost exclusively in medieval forest law records, perambulation rolls, and related boundary instruments from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Its practical function is cartographic and descriptive: it marks a discrete point in the physical delineation of a parcel or forest boundary, equivalent in purpose to what later common law land description would call a corner, monument, or angle-point.
The term's significance lies in its narrowness of use. It does not carry doctrinal weight as a legal concept in its own right — it is a term of description, not a term of art governing rights or obligations. Researchers working with Rotuli Perambulationum Forestae or similar medieval English administrative records should treat it as locational vocabulary rather than substantive legal terminology.
A particular trap for researchers: because CORNERUM appears in highly abbreviated Latin administrative records, it can be easily misread or conflated with other Latin locational terms (e.g., CORNERA, ANGULUS). Careful attention to manuscript context is essential.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole significant treatment of this term among standard historical legal dictionaries. Burrill renders it plainly as "a corner or angle" and situates it within old English law, citing a single source: Rot. Peramb. Forest. 29 Edw. I. m. 8 — a Perambulation of the Forest roll dating to the reign of Edward I (c. 1301). The illustrative phrase, "Et sic usque cornerum del Parkeres Breche de Beckele" (meaning approximately "and so as far as the corner of Parkeres Breche of Beckele"), is representative of the formulaic boundary-tracing language common to such records.
No entry for CORNERUM appears in Bouvier, Black, or other standard common law dictionaries, reflecting the term's obsolescence after the medieval period. The absence of broader treatment across the dictionary shelf confirms that this was a working term of record-keeping rather than a contested or theorized legal concept.