Definition
In old English law, a formal word of submission and defeat spoken by the vanquished champion in a trial by battle. When a combatant in judicial combat yielded rather than fighting to the death, he pronounced the word "craven," signaling his surrender and acceptance of defeat. The legal consequence was severe: the person who cried craven was deemed to have forfeited his legal standing as a free and lawful man (liber et legalis homo). This forfeiture — known as amittere liberam legem, or loss of free law — rendered him infamous, stripped him of the right to testify under oath, and excluded him from the protections afforded to freemen in medieval English law. Glanville described the word as "infestum et inverecundum verbum" — a hateful and shameful word.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Unwilling to fight; lacking even the rudiments of courage; extremely cowardly.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Cowardly; fainthearted; spiritless. "His craven heart." — Shakespeare.
The common meaning of craven is simply a synonym for cowardly, used freely in literary and everyday English. The legal meaning is narrower and more technical: craven was a specific spoken act with formal legal consequences, not merely a description of character. A person could be craven in the common sense without any legal effect; but to cry craven in trial by battle triggered the loss of legal personhood. The gap matters for researchers reading medieval legal chronicles or literary sources — the word appears in both registers, and context determines whether it carries technical legal weight.
Common Confusion
Craven is sometimes conflated with recreant, but the terms operate at different levels. Recreant describes the condition or act of yielding — being unfaithful to one's cause or showing cowardice in combat. Craven is the specific verbal utterance that formalized that yielding and activated its legal consequences. One could be recreant without having yet spoken the word; it was the pronouncement of craven that sealed the legal result. Bouvier's makes this distinction explicit: victory came either by death or by the champion proving recreant — that is, yielding and pronouncing "the horrible word craven."
Why It Matters in Research
Craven is a purely historical legal term with no modern operative legal meaning. Researchers will encounter it only in sources dealing with trial by battle, the medieval English legal system, and the concept of infamy in common law. Several research traps are worth noting.
First, the term appears in both legal and literary medieval sources, and the legal meaning is specific to the trial by battle context. A researcher reading Bracton, Glanville, or Blackstone will encounter it as a term of art; a researcher reading Chaucer or Shakespeare will encounter it as an adjective meaning cowardly. Do not import the legal definition into non-legal texts, or vice versa.
Second, the consequence of crying craven — amittere liberam legem — connects to a broader cluster of concepts around infamy, attainder, and legal incapacity in English common law. Researchers tracing the history of witness competency, oath-taking requirements, or civil death doctrines may find craven a useful node in that genealogy, even though the term itself became obsolete long before American law developed.
Third, trial by battle was formally abolished in England only in 1819, following the Ashford v. Thornton case, which revealed that the right had never been formally repealed. This means that technically, the legal architecture within which craven operated persisted on the books far longer than researchers typically assume. Sources from the early nineteenth century may still reference the term in live legal argument, not merely as antiquarian curiosity.
Finally, because craven carried the consequence of permanent infamy and loss of oath-taking capacity, it connects directly to questions about the historical roots of felony disqualification from jury service and witness competency rules — threads that run into American evidentiary law.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core definition and legal consequence. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's are consistent: craven was the word of submission in trial by battle, its utterance resulted in loss of free law and reduction to infamous status, and the defeated champion was no longer to be counted among those fit to be believed on oath.
Bouvier adds the most contextually useful framing, noting that victory in trial by battle came either through death or through the act of yielding accompanied by pronouncing "the horrible word craven" — making clear that the word itself was the operative legal act, not merely a description of what happened.
Black's (both editions) preserves Glanville's Latin characterization — "infestum et inverecundum verbum" (a hateful and shameful word) — which is worth retaining for researchers working with primary medieval sources, as Glanville's Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Angliae is among the earliest systematic treatments of English common law.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: none of them explore the downstream influence of the craven-infamy consequence on later evidentiary doctrine, nor do they situate the term within the broader abolition of trial by battle. For that context, researchers must look beyond the dictionary shelf to Blackstone's Commentaries (Book III) and the parliamentary record surrounding the 1819 abolition.
Jurisdictional Note
Craven as a legal term is specific to English common law and has no operative equivalent in American law. Trial by battle was never formally adopted as a legal institution in the American colonies or states, so craven never acquired independent legal meaning in U.S. jurisdictions. American researchers will encounter the term only in historical sources tracing the English common law inheritance.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See: Trial by Battle