Definition
A historical Scots legal term, of Dutch origin, denoting a treasurer or keeper of money — literally, a penny-master. The term appears in early Scottish legal sources, where it is glossed by Skene as "ane pennimaister or thesaurar." It refers to an officer charged with the custody and management of funds, equivalent in function to a treasurer within an institutional or governmental context.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will surface almost exclusively in early Scots legal texts and commentaries, particularly those engaging with the vocabulary of Skene's glosses on Scots law. Researchers working in pre-Union Scottish legal records or in comparative studies of Germanic and Dutch influence on Scots legal terminology should note that the term is a linguistic artifact as much as a legal one. It carries no continuing operative legal significance and does not appear in modern Scots or English legal usage.
The principal research trap is misclassification: a reader encountering the term in an archival or manuscript source might attempt to trace it through English common law dictionaries or Latin legal glossaries, where it will not appear. Its natural home is the Dutch-inflected vocabulary of early Scots institutional writing, and Skene's glossary is the appropriate starting point for any further investigation.
Researchers should also be alert to the proximity of this term in dictionary sources to related but distinct entries — Burrill's placement of FERDINGMANUS adjacent to FERDWITE and FERE is organizational, not conceptual. Those terms share no functional or etymological relationship with FERDINGMANUS and should not be read as connected legal concepts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary anglophone source for this term, and its entry is notably sparse. Burrill does not analyze the term independently but instead relays Skene's own gloss almost verbatim, identifying the term as Dutch in origin and translating it as "a penny-master or treasurer." No further elaboration is offered in the historical dictionary record. The entry in Burrill functions essentially as a cross-reference vehicle and a signal that the term belongs to the Scots legal lexicon rather than to the broader common law tradition.
What the historical sources do not provide is any discussion of the officer's actual duties, the institutional contexts in which the title was used, the rank or authority associated with the position, or whether the term had any statutory or customary legal significance beyond its descriptive label. Researchers requiring that level of detail will need to move beyond dictionary sources entirely and into primary Scots legal and historical records.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to early Scots law and has no recognized counterpart in English common law or other legal traditions. It carries no relevance to post-Union British law or to any modern jurisdiction.