Definition
Latin: "of the body." A phrase used in medieval and early common law contexts to indicate bodily origin or physical descent. It appears most commonly in two recurring constructions:
1. De corpore suo — "of his (or her) own body." A limiting formula used in fee tail grants and similar conveyances to restrict inheritance to lineal descendants of a specified person. A grant to a person "and the heirs of his body" or "heirs de corpore suo" confined the inheritable estate to blood issue, excluding collateral heirs.
2. De corpore (in procedural and nuisance contexts) — used in old writs and register entries to describe enclosures or physical structures in relation to a person's curtilage or dwelling, particularly in nuisance actions concerning a man's court (curia) or land adjacent to his house.
The phrase does not carry a single fixed legal meaning; its force depends entirely on the construction in which it appears. In practice, de corpore suo is the operationally significant form for most research purposes.
Common Confusion
De corpore is sometimes encountered by researchers who confuse it with de corpore comitatus (of the body of the county), a phrase used in jury selection to denote that jurors must be drawn from the county where the cause of action arose. These are unrelated usages. The shared Latin root creates surface similarity; context and the full phrase are essential to correct interpretation.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter de corpore most often in two settings: property history and writ practice.
In property history, de corpore suo is inseparable from fee tail doctrine. Medieval conveyances frequently used the phrase as a term of limitation. Understanding it is necessary to trace the chain of title in land records that predate or operate under entail, and to understand why certain estates were barred or unable to be alienated. The phrase survives in historical deeds and pleadings long after fee tail was abolished or converted in most American jurisdictions, so researchers working with colonial or early republic land records will encounter it without modern statutory context.
In writ and register research, de corpore appears in the Registrum Brevium and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium in nuisance-related entries. Burrill's reference to Reg. Orig. 155 and F. N. B. 127 G points to the procedural form of the writ rather than a property limitation. Researchers using these sources should note that the same two-word phrase can appear in formally distinct writs addressing categorically different problems.
The phrase will not appear in modern American statutes or most contemporary case law. Its research utility is primarily historical: reading Bracton, Coke, early English Year Books, colonial American land instruments, and the old register of writs. Researchers who encounter the phrase in a deed or pleading should locate the full surrounding clause before interpreting it.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal historical source available for this term and treats it economically, supplying Latin glosses and string citations rather than doctrinal analysis. The entry directs readers to Bracton (fol. 22b, 37b), Coke (7 Co. 41b), and Peere Williams (1 P. Wms. 73, 79), as well as to Crabb's Real Property. This citation pattern confirms that the term's doctrinal home is in real property, specifically in the law of entail and descent, rather than in criminal or procedural law.
Burrill does not synthesize the two distinct usages (limitation in grants versus nuisance in writ practice), leaving it to the researcher to recognize the contextual divergence. The nuisance entry — referencing the enclosure of a man's curia to the damage of a neighbor's freehold — is cross-referenced to Curia, suggesting that de corpore in that context is subordinate to the broader writ framework rather than independently significant.
No major divergence among historical sources is apparent; the phrase was treated as descriptive Latin in most reference works rather than as a term requiring extended doctrinal treatment. The relative thinness of historical dictionary coverage reflects that de corpore was a building block of legal Latin, not a freestanding doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
Fee tail — the estate to which de corpore suo most commonly attached — was abolished by statute at different times across American jurisdictions, with most states converting entails to fee simple by the nineteenth century. The phrase therefore has living operational significance only in jurisdictions that retained fee tail or in the interpretation of historical instruments. Researchers working with English materials face no such cutoff.