FLANDRENSES - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

FLANDRENSESAuthored

The Law Mind • 654 words

Definition

Flandrenses (Latin) is a term found in medieval English legal sources denoting inhabitants of Flanders — that is, Flemings — as a recognized category of foreign persons subject to particular rules governing their status, landholding, and legal treatment under English law. The term appears in property and jurisdictional contexts, typically in discussions of the legal disabilities or special conditions attached to aliens from specific territories, including Normans and Flemings, who occupied a distinct and historically significant position in English commercial and political life.

Why It Matters in Research

This term is primarily encountered in medieval Latin legal texts and records, most notably in Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, where it appears alongside Normannorum in passages addressing the tenure and treatment of foreign landholders. Researchers working in early English property law, alien status doctrine, or medieval commercial regulation should recognize Flandrenses as a term of art identifying Flemings as a legally cognizable group — not merely a geographic descriptor.

The Flemish presence in England was economically and legally significant. Flemish merchants and textile workers were among the most prominent alien communities in medieval England, and their status intersected with royal policy on alien merchants, staple towns, and the regulation of foreign trade. Legal rules touching Flandrenses may therefore appear not only in treatises like Bracton but also in royal charters, parliamentary statutes concerning alien merchants, and records of the law merchant.

Researchers should be alert to the truncated and fragmentary state of Burrill's entry for this term, which breaks off mid-sentence and appears to blend discussion of Flandrenses with unrelated material on British maritime sovereignty and the doctrine of striking sail — likely a typesetting or compilation error in the source edition. Any substantive legal propositions drawn from the Burrill entry for this term should be verified directly against Bracton and contemporaneous primary sources rather than relied upon from the dictionary alone.

Because the term belongs to a body of medieval Latin legal language that largely disappeared from active use by the early modern period, it will not appear in later common law dictionaries or American legal sources. Research is essentially bounded by the medieval English period, with Bracton's text (circa mid-13th century) as the primary anchor.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only significant dictionary treatment of this term and defines it simply as "inhabitants of Flanders; Flemings," citing Bracton at folio 87b and 343. The entry pairs Flandrenses with Normannorum, reflecting Bracton's treatment of these groups together in the context of alien landholding and exceptions or conditions attached to the sovereign's power over foreign subjects' property. Burrill's Latin citation — Sicut de terris Normannorum et Flandrentium — indicates the term functions in Bracton as part of a comparative or analogical legal statement about how lands of Normans and Flemings were treated.

No other historical legal dictionary in the standard canon (Black's, Bouvier's, Jacob's, Tomlin's) appears to carry a dedicated entry for Flandrenses, which reflects the term's narrow scope and purely historical application. Burrill, with its particular strength in Roman and medieval Latin legal terminology, is the appropriate reference point. The corruption or misprint visible in the Burrill entry — where the text shifts abruptly from alien status to maritime law — means researchers should treat the entry as a starting reference only and proceed to Bracton directly.

Jurisdictional Note

Flandrenses as a legal term is specific to medieval English law and has no operative meaning in modern English, American, or Commonwealth legal systems. Its relevance is confined to historical legal research in the context of pre-modern English alien law and property doctrine.

FLANDRENSESmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

L. Lat. In old English law. Inhabitants of Flanders; Flemings. Sicut de terris Normannorum et Flandrentium. Bract. fol. 87 b. 343. From the various exceptions to this British sovereignty over the British seas. rule, however, which have been gradually Molloy de Jur. Mar. 80, 82. Called, in an established, a distinction has not only old record, "striking and veiling the bonarisen between fixtures removable, and irrenet." Id. 80, in marg. movable, but the word fixtures itself has been said to have acquired the peculiar meaning of chattels which have been annexed to the freehold, but which are removable at the will of the person who annexed them. 1 Cr. M. & R. 276. Grady on Fixtures, 1, 2. And see 35 Eng. Law & Eq. R. 173. More than this, -it has been said that the term fixtures does not necessarily mean things affixed to the freehold. 5 Mees. & W. 175. This goes to justify Mr. Chitty's remark, that fixture is a term in general denoting the very reverse of the name. 1 Chitt. Gen. Pr. 161. And this idea has been carried so far in Pennsylvania, as to have led to the establishment of an entirely new definition of a fixture, viz.: something essential to the use of the freehold, whether actually fastened to it or not. 2 Watts & Serg. 116, 390. See 6 Greenleaf's R. 157. On the other hand, and as the opposite extreme of this doctrine, it has been held in Connecticut that mere annexation to the realty was not sufficient to give the attribute of a fixture to a chattel personal, unless it was so annexed that an injury would result to the freehold from the merc act of removal. 9 Conn. R. 67. And see 14 Mass. R. 352. A middle ground has been taken in New-York, between these two opinions. 20 Wendell's R. 636. These conflicting decisions, which are 'collected in 2 Smith's Leading Cases, 121, (Am. editor's note,) have tended to unsettle the definition of the term fixture, or rather to introduce a variety of definitions which are, in a greater or less degree, departures from the primary meaning above given. The whole subject has recently been very elaborately discussed by the Supreme Courts of Vermont and Ohio. See 28 Vermont R. 428. 1 Ohio St. R. 511. And see 2 Kernan's R. 170. 26 Alabama R. 497, 498. Fixtures are now usually divided into several kinds; as landlord's fixtures, tenant's fixtures, trade fixtures, and farm or agricultural fixtures. Archb. Landl. & Ten. 359. See United States Digest, Fixtures. FLAG, Duty of the. The ceremony of striking the flag and lowering the topsail of a vessel to the British flag, formerly practised as a solemn acknowledgment of