Definition
In Saxon and old English law, a flem was a fugitive bondman or villein — a serf or unfree tenant who had fled from a lord's land or custody. The term carried two related but distinct senses in historical legal usage:
1. The person: a fugitive bondman or villein who had absconded, and by some authorities (notably Tomlin, cited in Bouvier), also an outlaw more generally.
2. The privilege: the right of a lord or jurisdiction to receive and retain the goods and fines of such fugitives. This sense shades into the related terms FLEMENE FRIT and FLYMENA FRYNTHE, which designated the specific privilege of harboring or relieving a fugitive or outlaw — or, in a different framing, the jurisdictional entitlement to the forfeited property that resulted from such flight.
The term is obsolete and has no application in modern law. It appears exclusively in historical, antiquarian, and legal-historical research.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A male given name.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not attested as a common English word in Webster's 1913.
The gap here is total rather than partial. The modern common use of "flem" (as a given name) bears no relationship to the legal-historical term. Researchers encountering "flem" in Saxon-era legal records or antiquarian dictionaries should not attempt to reason from any modern English sense of the word.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
FLEMENE FRIT / FLEMENES FRINTHE / FLYMENA FRYNTHE: The reception or relief of a fugitive or outlaw. In Black's (2nd Ed.), following Jacob's Law Dictionary, this term designates the act of harboring a fugitive — a distinct legal wrong or franchise category under Saxon and early English law. The spelling varies considerably across sources, reflecting the inconsistent transliteration of Old English into Latin-influenced legal records.
FLEMESWITE: Identified in Bouvier (citing Fleta) as the possession of the goods of fugitive bondmen. This was a seigniorial privilege — the right of a lord to appropriate the chattels of a villein who fled. The "wite" element is the Old English term for penalty or fine.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in three research contexts: (1) studies of Saxon and Anglo-Norman land tenure and villeinage; (2) antiquarian legal dictionaries of the 17th–19th centuries, where it appears as part of comprehensive glossaries of obsolete terms; and (3) secondary scholarship on outlawry and the forfeiture consequences of flight in medieval English law.
Researchers should be alert to several navigational challenges. First, the spelling is highly variable — flem, flemene, flymena, flemenes frinthe — and historical sources are inconsistent. A search on one spelling may miss critical passages using another. Second, Bouvier and Black diverge on an important point: Bouvier (citing Tomlin) extends the term to outlaws generally, derived from the Saxon root meaning "to kill or slay," while Black's definitions keep the focus on fugitive bondmen and the privilege attaching to their goods. This divergence may reflect different manuscript traditions or different antiquarian authorities, and researchers relying on either dictionary exclusively may miss the contested scope of the term. Third, the related franchise terms (flemene frit, flemeswite) are sometimes treated as synonyms and sometimes as distinct categories; Fleta and Spelman should be consulted for the primary authority.
The term has no modern legal survival. It cannot be analogized to contemporary employment, property, or criminal law concepts without significant historical distortion.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Bouvier's agree on the core definition — a fugitive bondman or villein — and both cite Spelman as the primary authority. The editions of Black's add the privilege dimension explicitly, noting the right to the goods and fines of fugitives, and the Second Edition extends the treatment to cover FLEMENE FRIT more fully, citing Jacob.
Bouvier adds the outlaw sense (citing Tomlin) and provides the term FLEMESWITE with a citation to Fleta, a 13th-century English legal treatise — a reference the Black's entries do not reproduce. Bouvier's etymological note (Saxon flean, to kill or slay) is offered in support of the outlaw interpretation, though the derivation is not universally accepted among later philologists.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is any discussion of how these franchise rights operated in practice — how lords claimed flemeswite, how courts adjudicated competing claims to a fugitive's goods, or how the privilege interacted with the Crown's overriding interest in outlaws. Researchers needing that operational context must go beyond the dictionary shelf to Fleta, Bracton, and modern historical scholarship on villeinage.
Jurisdictional Note
Flem is a term of Saxon and early English law with no recognized equivalent in Scots law, Welsh law, or the continental European legal traditions. Its application is confined to England before and shortly after the Norman Conquest, through the period when villeinage remained a recognized legal status.