FOIRTHOCHT - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

FOIRTHOCHTAuthored

The Law Mind • 739 words

Definition

Foirthocht is a term from old Scots law meaning "forethought" or "premeditated." It appears in early Scottish criminal proceedings to describe an act done with prior deliberation — the mental state that distinguished planned wrongdoing from impulsive or accidental conduct. The term functions as an adjective or descriptive qualifier attached to a criminal charge, roughly equivalent to the modern concept of premeditation in homicide law.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The term is obsolete and does not appear in modern general dictionaries.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The term did not enter general English usage and was confined to Scots legal and administrative records.

The word is a Scots-language rendering of "forethought" — a compound whose ordinary meaning (thinking ahead; prior consideration) maps closely onto its legal function. Unlike many archaic legal terms where the gap between common and legal meaning requires careful navigation, here the ordinary meaning of the constituent parts reliably illuminates the legal sense. The difficulty for researchers is not semantic but paleographic and linguistic: recognizing the term in manuscript sources and understanding its procedural context within early Scots criminal practice.

Why It Matters in Research

Foirthocht is a term of art in early Scottish criminal records, not general common law sources. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in pre-Union Scots legal materials — particularly criminal trial records, indictments, and procedural registers of the Justiciary Court. The standard reference is Pitcairn's Criminal Trials in Scotland (cited by both Black's and Burrill's as "1 Pitc. Crim. Tr."), the primary edited collection of early Scottish criminal proceedings, covering roughly 1488 to 1624. Any researcher working in that corpus should treat foirthocht as a signal term: its presence in a charge indicates that premeditation — not merely the act itself — was at issue, which carried significant consequences for the severity of the offense and the available defenses.

The key research trap is conflation with English common law categories. Foirthocht does not map cleanly onto the English distinction between murder and manslaughter, though the underlying conceptual concern — distinguishing premeditated from unpremeditated killing — is analogous. Early Scots criminal law developed along its own institutional lines, and importing English doctrinal frameworks when reading these records will distort meaning.

Researchers should also note that Burrill's entry conflates two entirely unrelated terms under the same heading: foirthocht (forethought/premeditated) and folcmote (a county or city court assembly). This appears to be a typographical or editorial error in the Burrill's text, where a separate entry for folcmote has run into the foirthocht entry. The folcmote material has no connection to Scots criminal law and should be disregarded when working on foirthocht specifically.

For Law Mind corpus researchers, foirthocht will surface in historical Scottish legal materials rather than English or American sources. It has no continuing life in modern Scots law and is not used in contemporary legal writing. Treat it as a period-specific term requiring contextual reading of the surrounding document rather than a concept with evolving doctrinal content.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's and Burrill's agree entirely on substance: both define foirthocht as "forethought; premeditated" in old Scots law, and both cite the same page of Pitcairn's Criminal Trials as authority. Neither source elaborates on procedural context, the specific offenses to which foirthocht was attached, or how Scots courts assessed premeditation in practice. This is a gap that the dictionary sources do not fill — researchers needing more than a bare gloss will need to go directly to Pitcairn or to institutional works on early Scots criminal law such as Mackenzie's Laws and Customes of Scotland in Matters Criminal (1678).

The Burrill's entry, as noted above, is corrupted by an apparent editorial run-on that appends folcmote definitions. Researchers should treat the Burrill's entry for foirthocht as ending after the Pitcairn citation.

Jurisdictional Note

Foirthocht is exclusively a Scots law term with no English common law parallel and no American reception. It appears in historical sources predating the Acts of Union (1707) and has no operative role in any modern legal system.

FOIRTHOCHTmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

Sc. In old Scotch law. Forethought; premeditated. 1 Pitc. Cr. Trials, part 1, p. 90. c. 36. Conf. A county court; an assembly of the people or freeholders of a county, (conventus comitatus.) Otherwise called the shiremote. Spelman. A city court; an assembly of the inhabitants of a city or borough, (conventus civitatis seu burgi.) Otherwise called the burgmote. Spelman. The folcmote or city court of London is mentioned in ancient records. Id. Crabb's Hist. 141. The term seems to have been generally applied to all courts that were adapted to the convenience of the people within any district. Id. 26. See Cowell. FOITS, Foitz, Fiez. L. Fr. Times. Un foit; one time; once. Autre foit; another time; before. Ascun foits; sometimes. Sovent foits; oftentimes. Tout foits; at all times; always. L. Fr. Dict. Une foitz, deux foitz, et la tierce foitz; once, twice and the third time. Britt. c. 30. Deuz fiez par an; twice a year. Cartar. 25 Edw. I. FOL, Fole. L. Fr. A fool; an idiot; Fol nastre; a born or natural fool. Britt. Fols nastres. Id. c. 34. Foolish. Fet Assaver, § 45. FOLCLAND, Folkland. Sax. [from fole, people, and land.] In Saxon law. Land of the people or public, (terra popularis.) Spelman. So called, either because usually distributed among the common people, or because it was the property of the whole community; or, finally, because it was held by common right or law.* Aman, voc. Jus commuae. species of land among the Saxons, which FOLDAGE. See Faldage. was not held by any assurance in writing, and in that respect distinguished from bocland. Terra popularis quæ jure communi possidetur, vel sine scripto. Spelman. Land held without writing, paying an annual rent, and liable to certain services. Somner. See Bocland. Folcland has been supposed, by Sir W. Blackstone and other writers, to have been land held in villeinage, and resumable at the discretion of the lord. 2 Bl. Com. 90. Crabb's Hist. 13. Gilb. C. Pleas, Introd. 15. Cowell. Later researches into Saxon antiquities, however, have shown that though it was subject to many burFOLCRIGHT, Folkright. [Sax. folerihte; from folc, people, and rihte, right; Lat. jus commune.] Common right; that which is equally the right of all.* This word occurs in the laws of King Edward the elder, and is thought by Lambard to be the same with common law; which, however, is questioned by Spelman. LL. Edw. Senioris, c. 1. 1 Bl. Com, 65. Spel-