Definition
An archaic Anglo-Saxon legal term denoting the act of receiving or harboring a fugitive, and by extension, the legal right of a lord or institution to claim the chattels of such a fugitive. The term encompasses two related but distinct concepts that appear intertwined in early medieval English legal sources: (1) the offense of sheltering or relieving a person who has fled justice or been declared an outlaw; and (2) the jurisdictional privilege attached to certain lords or religious houses entitling them to the goods forfeited by fugitives found within their lands.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will be encountered almost exclusively in sources dealing with Anglo-Saxon and early Norman English law, particularly in the pre-Conquest law codes and the post-Conquest compilations that attempted to record or synthesize earlier custom. Researchers working in this period should be alert to several complications.
First, the spelling is radically unstable across sources. Burrill records the term as flemenesfirinthe but immediately notes that Blount renders it flymenafyrmthe, while Fleta uses flemenessreive and flemesrenthe for related or overlapping concepts. Spelman uses flemenfirma. These are not necessarily synonymous: different scribal traditions, different manuscript bases, and different interpretive choices by early modern legal antiquarians each produced variant forms that may shade the meaning slightly. A researcher using a single spelling as a search term will miss the majority of relevant material.
Second, the dual character of the term — offense versus privilege — is a meaningful distinction that historical sources do not always keep cleanly separated. The act of harboring a fugitive was a wrong; the right to profit from a fugitive's forfeited goods was a franchise. In the law codes of Ine and Henry I, and in the Confessor's charters, the term appears in contexts that invoke both aspects. Researchers should read surrounding provisions carefully to determine which sense is operative.
Third, this term connects to the broader corpus of Anglo-Saxon franchise rights and the history of outlawry. The privilege of flemenfirma — receiving the chattels of fugitives — was among the liberties sometimes granted by charter to religious houses, including the Waltham Abbey charter cited by Burrill. Researchers tracing ecclesiastical immunities or the development of private jurisdiction in early medieval England will need this term alongside infangthief, outfangthief, and sac and soc.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term, and its entry is notably compressed. Burrill defers substantially to Blount and Spelman rather than offering independent analysis, which signals that even by the nineteenth century this was a term treated as antiquarian rather than living law. Burrill's entry trails off mid-sentence — the definition of the right to have chattels of fugitives is never completed in the surviving text — which is a research hazard: the entry as it stands is fragmentary.
The references Burrill cites — the Laws of Ine (c. 29 and 47), the Laws of Henry I (c. 10 and 12), and the Waltham Abbey charter of Edward the Confessor — are genuine historical documents. Fleta, the late-thirteenth-century legal treatise, is the latest source cited and represents the Norman-era attempt to preserve or reformulate earlier Anglo-Saxon concepts within a more systematized legal vocabulary. The shift in Fleta to flemenessreive and flemesrenthe may reflect either scribal drift or a deliberate reconceptualization of the right. Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum, which treats flemenfirma as a separate headword, is the most thorough early modern treatment and should be consulted alongside Burrill for any serious research into this cluster of terms.
No modern legal dictionaries carry this term, which is consistent with its purely historical character — it has no application in any current legal system.
Jurisdictional Note
Applicable only to Anglo-Saxon and early Norman English law. The term and its cognates have no counterpart in Scots, Welsh, or continental legal systems, though analogous provisions concerning the harboring of outlaws exist across early medieval European legal codes under different names.