Definition
De male fame (Law French: "of bad reputation" or "of evil fame") is a phrase used in early English legal pleading and procedure to characterize a person as being of ill repute in the community. It functioned as a descriptive ground or allegation — most commonly appearing in contexts where a person's reputation for wrongdoing was legally relevant to whether they could be detained, subjected to surety requirements, or denied certain procedural protections. A person described as de male fame was, in essence, someone whose standing in the community gave legal authorities cause to treat them with heightened suspicion or procedural disadvantage.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this phrase will find it almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English legal materials — statutes, plea rolls, and procedural records from roughly the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. Its primary statutory appearance is in the First Statute of Westminster (1275), which used the concept to authorize the detention of persons of bad fame pending trial or surety. Understanding the phrase is therefore essential for reading that statute and related commentary on its operation.
The phrase belongs to the body of Law French that saturated English legal practice before the gradual displacement of that language in the courts. Researchers working in pre-modern English legal sources should be alert to the fact that de male fame is not a freestanding doctrine with a continuous doctrinal line into modern law — it is a procedural and characterological marker native to its era. Attempts to trace it forward into modern concepts of character evidence or reputational harm will find no clean lineage; the concept dissolved into other frameworks as English criminal procedure developed.
The phrase also connects to the broader conceptual cluster of infamy in English law — the idea that certain persons, by reason of conduct or conviction, lost legal standing or credibility. Researchers interested in the history of testimonial competency, the right to compurgation, or the development of bail and surety practice will find de male fame appearing as a recurring touchstone. It is worth noting that sources treating "infamy" or "fama" in medieval canon and common law will often illuminate de male fame more richly than sources treating it as an isolated term.
One research trap: the phrase looks like a fragment of a longer formula, and in many manuscript sources it will appear mid-sentence as a characterization rather than as a standalone term. Researchers should not expect to find it indexed as a headword in all historical finding aids.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary defines de male fame simply as "of bad reputation," citing the First Statute of Westminster, chapter 12, as the primary authority. This entry is accurate but thin. Burrill gives the researcher the translation and the statutory hook but does not explain the procedural significance of the designation — namely, that being found or alleged to be de male fame could affect a person's liberty pending trial and their access to certain procedural protections.
Historical legal dictionaries generally treat this phrase as a term of art requiring no elaborate explanation, which reflects how transparent the Latin and Law French would have been to practitioners of earlier centuries. Modern researchers, by contrast, need to situate the phrase within the broader framework of medieval English criminal procedure to use it effectively. Burrill's citation to Westm. 1 remains the most reliable starting anchor for primary source research.
No meaningful divergence exists among historical dictionary sources on the basic meaning of the phrase. The gap is not between dictionaries but between the bare translation and the fuller procedural context that dictionaries of this era did not think it necessary to supply.
Jurisdictional Note
De male fame is a term of English legal history with no direct counterpart in American or other common law jurisdictions as a term of art. Researchers working in Scottish, Irish, or colonial legal records may encounter related Latin and Law French formulas, but the specific phrase and its statutory anchoring are characteristic of the English tradition.