Definition
An archaic and obsolete spelling of "foreign," used in Law French and early English legal writing. In its legal context, the term carried a specific technical meaning: a person who belonged without — that is, outside a given jurisdiction, city, or community. In early English practice, a forein was distinguished from a resident or denizen, denoting a non-inhabitant of a city or borough who lacked the legal standing, privileges, and obligations that attached to those dwelling within it.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete spelling of "foreign."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Foreign. [Obs.] — Chaucer.
The gap between common and legal usage here is not one of meaning but of precision. In ordinary usage, "forein" was simply an archaic way to write "foreign." In legal sources, particularly Law French Year Book practice, the term acquired a technical social and jurisdictional dimension: it identified a specific class of person — one who stood outside the bounds of a city or community and was therefore treated differently under local law. The common word pointed broadly outward; the legal term pointed at a recognized legal status.
Common Confusion
Do not confuse the spelling variant "forein/foreyn" with "forinsec" or "forinsecus," related but distinct Law Latin terms concerning services owed outside a manor (forinsec service) as opposed to those owed within. The spatial logic is similar — inside versus outside — but the legal contexts are different. "Forein" in Year Book usage concerns personal status relative to a city or community; "forinsec" in feudal usage concerns the nature of tenure obligations.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter "forein," "forrein," "forreine," and "foreyn" interchangeably in Law French materials, Year Books, and early English records. These are not distinct terms — they are variant spellings of the same word arising from the inconsistent orthography of medieval and early modern legal French and English. A search for any one form may not surface the others, so researchers working in Year Book materials or early borough records should search all attested variants.
The substantive legal concept — the distinction between a forein (outsider, non-resident) and a denizen or resiant (resident, insider) — matters for understanding early local governance, borough law, and the legal privileges attached to residence. The Yearbook references in Burrill place this distinction firmly in the reign of Edward III, when questions of who counted as a city-dweller and who did not had real economic and legal stakes, particularly in trade and guild regulation contexts.
Modern databases indexing Year Books or digitized plea rolls may not normalize spelling across variants. Researchers should treat "forein," "forrein," "foreyn," and "forreine" as a spelling cluster requiring parallel searches. Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) treats this term as merely a spelling variant without substantive definition; Burrill is the source that preserves the meaningful legal content and the Year Book references that give the term its doctrinal significance.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus diverge in depth but agree in kind. Both editions of Black's offer only a brief redirect — "an old form of foreign" — citing Blount's Nomo-Lexicon without further development. Burrill provides the substantive content: the Law French origins, the range of spelling variants, the distinction from gens de la citie and from resiants, and the specific Year Book citations. This divergence is instructive: for a term like this, Black's is nearly useless for legal-historical research, while Burrill is the indispensable source.
Burrill's entry makes explicit what Black's leaves implicit — that "forein" was not merely a spelling curiosity but a term of art in early English municipal and borough law, identifying a recognized legal category of person. Researchers who consult only Black's will miss this entirely.