Definition
An obsolete Law French term meaning exchange. Used in medieval English legal texts to denote a transaction in which one thing of value is given for another of equivalent worth. The phrase eschaunge à la vaillaunce — exchanges to the value — captures the essential requirement that the things exchanged be of comparable worth. The term has no independent legal significance today; it survives only in historical sources and serves as a variant form pointing to the substantive doctrine of exchange.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete form of exchange.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Exchange. (Obs.)
The gap here is narrow. Eschaunge and its modern descendant exchange share the same core meaning. The legal significance of the older form is not in any divergence from common meaning, but in its appearance in a specific technical context — medieval property and conveyancing law — where exchange carried precise doctrinal weight regarding equivalence of value that casual modern usage does not convey.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English legal records, Year Books, or Anglo-Norman legal texts will encounter eschaunge as a routine spelling variant. The term appears in Britton, the late-thirteenth-century treatise on English law composed in Law French, which is among the earliest systematic expositions of the common law. References to Britt. c. 54 and c. 75 in Burrill indicate the term's grounding in that tradition.
The primary research trap is simple: failing to recognize eschaunge as exchange. A researcher unfamiliar with Law French orthographic conventions may treat it as an unknown term when it is simply the period form of a familiar concept. Variant spellings in medieval sources are numerous and inconsistent; eschaunge, eschange, and eschaunger (the verbal form) may all appear in close proximity.
The substantive doctrine matters as much as the spelling. Exchange in medieval property law was not merely a commercial transaction — it was a specific conveyancing method by which two parties transferred lands to each other simultaneously, with the requirement of equivalence (à la vaillaunce) serving as both a formal and equitable constraint. Understanding that eschaunge carries this technical freight, not just the general idea of swapping, is essential to reading source material accurately.
Researchers should also be alert to the distinction between exchange as a conveyancing device and exchange as a commercial or monetary transaction. Medieval sources use the same term for both, and context is the only guide.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is brief but precise. It supplies the Law French gloss, the Britton citation, and the key phrase eschaunge à la vaillaunce, which encapsulates the equivalence requirement central to the legal doctrine. Burrill does not elaborate on the doctrine itself, treating eschaunge as a simple cross-reference form pointing toward the substantive entry for exchange.
The Webster's 1913 and Wiktionary entries confirm the term's obsolescence in general usage. No historical legal dictionary beyond Burrill's is represented in the source material for this entry. Researchers requiring fuller doctrinal treatment of exchange as a conveyancing device should consult Britton directly and the relevant sections of Coke on Littleton, where exchange receives sustained analysis in the English property law tradition.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: EXCHANGE (Property Law); CONVEYANCE