Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "to believe." Appearing in early Anglo-Norman legal texts and pleading formulae, *croire* functioned as a verb of belief or credence — most directly in contexts where a party affirmed reliance upon or trust in a statement, instrument, or person. It is closely related to, and largely synonymous with, the Law French *creier* (also rendered *créer* or *creyer*), and both forms appear in medieval English legal records and Year Books. The term has no operative legal meaning in modern practice and survives only as a historical artifact of the Law French vocabulary that shaped early common law pleading and doctrine.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): *Croire* is a standard French verb meaning "to believe" or "to think," in everyday use across French-speaking contexts.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not include *croire* as an English entry; the term was not assimilated into common English usage.
The gap here is narrow but worth noting: in ordinary French, *croire* carries a broad range of cognitive and religious senses (to believe, to suppose, to have faith). In Law French legal usage, the term was narrower and more technical — it signaled a formal posture of reliance or credence within pleading contexts, not merely an internal mental state. A researcher encountering *croire* in a legal record should not read it as a simple expression of personal opinion.
Common Confusion
*Croire* and *creier* (also *créer*) are easily conflated, and Burrill himself cross-references the two. They are closely related but not always interchangeable across sources. *Creier* appears with somewhat greater frequency in the printed Year Books and Kelham's dictionary of Norman-French legal terms. Researchers should treat the two as variant spellings or cognates covering the same conceptual territory rather than as terms with distinct technical meanings.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a paleographic and philological issue rather than a doctrinal one. Researchers working in:
— **Year Books and early plea rolls**: Law French was the operative language of English court proceedings from the Norman Conquest through the late seventeenth century. *Croire* and its cognates appear in formulaic phrases recording a party's averment of belief or reliance. Recognizing the term prevents misreading or mistranslation of manuscript and early printed sources.
— **Norman-French legal dictionaries**: Burrill's cross-reference to Kelham is the critical pointer here. Robert Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779) is a primary shelf resource for this vocabulary, and researchers encountering *croire* in a primary source should consult Kelham directly for contextual usage examples that Burrill does not reproduce.
— **Credence and proof doctrines**: The concept embedded in *croire* — formal belief or reliance — touches on early evidentiary ideas about the weight accorded to oaths, testimony, and instruments. While the term itself is not a term of art that generated a discrete doctrine, tracing its usage in pleading formulae can illuminate how early common law courts conceptualized the cognitive standard required to act on evidence.
There are no modern jurisdictional implications. The term does not appear in contemporary statutes, rules, or case law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is skeletal: "L. Fr. To believe. See Creier. Kelham." This is one of the shorter entries in the dictionary and functions almost entirely as a cross-reference. Burrill confirms the meaning, supplies the linguistic classification (Law French), and immediately redirects the researcher to the fuller treatment under *creier* and to Kelham's Norman-French dictionary as the authoritative source. No other major American or English legal dictionary of the nineteenth century — not Black's, not Bouvier's, not Jacob's — appears to carry a substantive entry for *croire*, which reinforces that this term was already archaic by the time systematic legal lexicography developed. The historical dictionaries collectively treat this as vocabulary preservation rather than living doctrine.