Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "High Peak," used in historical English legal records to designate the Castle of the Peak (also known as Peak Castle or Peveril Castle) located in Derbyshire, England. The term appears in medieval writs, grants, and legal instruments as a place-name identifier for this royal fortress and its surrounding jurisdiction. As with many Latin place-name designations in the common law tradition, the phrase functioned as a proper reference to a specific geographic and jurisdictional location rather than as a term of legal art carrying substantive doctrine.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a navigational artifact for researchers working in medieval English legal records, particularly those involving the royal honor of Peveril, forest law administration, or Derbyshire property instruments. Researchers encountering "de Alto Pecco" or variants such as "de Alto Pico" in archival writs, patent rolls, or close rolls should understand it as a geographic locator, not a legal doctrine.
The principal trap is misreading the phrase as a substantive legal term when it is functioning solely as part of a place-name designation. Medieval Latin records frequently embedded location identifiers directly into operative legal language, making it easy to mistake a geographic reference for a term of legal significance.
Researchers should be aware that Burrill groups this entry alongside DEA (the river Dee in Scotland), suggesting his source — identified as "L. Lat. Dict." — was drawing from a glossary of Latin geographic and administrative terms used in British legal records rather than from a doctrinal legal dictionary. This context is important: the term belongs to the legal-geographic vocabulary of the Plea Rolls and similar instruments, not to the vocabulary of substantive common law.
Connections to related research areas include forest law (the Peak was a royal forest), castle guard obligations, and the honors system of feudal tenure, all of which may appear in records that use this phrase.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary defines the term concisely: "High Peak; the Castle of the Peak in Derbyshire," citing "L. Lat. Dict." as authority. Burrill adds a companion entry for DEA (the river Dee in Scotland) from the same source, indicating that both entries derive from a Latin glossary of British geographic terms used in legal instruments, likely a dictionary of medieval Latin compiled for use by practitioners reading old records.
No other standard historical law dictionaries in the common corpus — not Jacob's Law Dictionary, not Tomlin's Law Dictionary, not Black's early editions — appear to carry this entry, which is consistent with its purely geographic rather than doctrinal character. The term's presence in Burrill reflects his broader and more antiquarian approach to the Latin vocabulary of English legal records, an approach that makes his dictionary particularly valuable (and occasionally distracting) for researchers in medieval and early modern English law.
The "L. Lat. Dict." citation Burrill relies upon is almost certainly a reference to a dictionary of medieval or law Latin, possibly Du Cange's Glossarium or a similar continental or British glossarist. Researchers needing deeper confirmation should consult Du Cange's Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis or the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources for parallel entries.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to English legal history and the records of the royal administration of Derbyshire. It has no application in other common law jurisdictions and carries no transatlantic legal significance.