Definition
An Anglo-Norman legal term meaning unfurnished or unprovided. Found in early English legal sources, the term describes a condition of being without adequate provision, equipment, or supplies — typically applied to persons, garrisons, or properties lacking necessary resources or means of defense.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering DESGARNYS in historical legal texts should recognize it as an Anglo-Norman term operating within the vocabulary of early medieval English law, where French and Latin terminology dominated formal legal writing. Its appearance in Britton — the thirteenth-century French-language treatise on English law — places it within a specific stratum of the corpus: post-Conquest legal literature that had not yet standardized into Latin scholasticism or later common-law English. When searching the Law Mind corpus for related concepts, researchers should note that this term will not appear in post-medieval materials under this spelling; its functional equivalents in later periods are expressed through entirely different vocabulary. Cross-referencing with terms of distraint, forfeiture, and feudal obligation may surface the substantive legal contexts in which this condition had operative significance — for example, a lord's failure to keep a castle or holding properly furnished could carry legal consequences under feudal tenure obligations.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole dictionary treatment of this term, citing two passages in Britton (chapters 4 and 123) and offering a compact two-word gloss: "Unfurnished; unprovided." Burrill does not expand on the legal contexts in which the term appeared or the consequences that attached to the condition it described. This brevity is characteristic of how Anglo-Norman vocabulary was treated in nineteenth-century legal dictionaries — catalogued for completeness rather than analyzed for doctrinal content. Researchers should treat Burrill's entry as a pointer to the primary source rather than as interpretive guidance. Direct consultation of Britton is necessary to understand the operative legal significance of the term in its original contexts.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is specific to early English law as codified in Anglo-Norman legal texts. It has no recognized use in Scottish, Irish, or continental legal traditions under this form, and no application in any modern common-law jurisdiction.