Definition
A fortress or place of strength. In English law, a fortalice was a fortified structure of sufficient significance that it would not pass by a general grant of land — its conveyance required a specific, express grant. The term functioned as a term of art in medieval and early modern property law to identify defensible structures that the Crown and common law treated as distinct from ordinary land improvements.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A small fortress.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A small outwork of a fortification; a fortilage — also called fortelace.
The common usage describes the fortalice as a minor defensive structure, almost incidental to a larger fortification. The legal meaning carries the opposite implication: a fortalice was legally significant precisely because it was a substantial place of strength, not a minor outwork. A researcher encountering the word in a conveyancing context should not assume diminutive size implies diminished legal status — the legal treatment was more restrictive, not less.
Why It Matters in Research
Fortalice is a term of medieval English property law with almost no continuing vitality in modern doctrine. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in:
— Historical land grants and conveyancing records from the medieval and early Tudor periods, where the distinction between ordinary land and a fortalice controlled what passed under a general grant.
— Parliamentary statutes, most notably 11 Hen. VII c. 18, which both source dictionaries cite as the primary statutory authority. Researchers working with early Tudor legislation should locate the original statute rather than relying solely on dictionary paraphrase, as the precise scope of what constituted a fortalice for statutory purposes was a matter of legal interpretation.
— Scottish legal texts, where the term appears with somewhat greater frequency than in English sources, owing to the longer persistence of fortified tower houses and similar structures in Scottish land tenure.
— Military law and feudal tenure scholarship, where the fortalice appears in discussions of castles, fortifications, and the conditions under which the Crown could assert control over defensible positions.
The principal research trap is treating this as a purely architectural term when encountered in a legal document. The legal consequence — that a fortalice would not pass without special grant — had real conveyancing implications: a deed that failed to specifically identify and convey a fortalice on the land could leave the grantee without title to a significant structure. Researchers examining disputes over incomplete conveyances in historical records should check whether a fortalice or similar fortified structure was at issue.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence are in complete agreement on the core definition: a fortress or place of strength that required a special grant to pass. Both cite 11 Hen. VII c. 18 as the authoritative source. The agreement across these two independent dictionaries suggests this definition was well-settled among legal lexicographers of the late nineteenth century.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry as transcribed contains an apparent editorial corruption: after the definition of fortalice, the text transitions without break into a discussion of a second offence made felony during the English Commonwealth (citing Scob. 121) and subsequent treatment under canon law for incontinency. This material clearly belongs to a separate entry — likely "fornication" — and was either erroneously merged in the source transcription or reflects a printing anomaly in the original. Researchers using Rapalje & Lawrence directly should verify that the fortalice entry ends with the statutory citation and that the Commonwealth-era felony material does not purport to modify the fortalice definition.
Neither source dictionary engages with the Scottish usage or with the architectural question of what physical structures qualified as a fortalice at law. Those dimensions require recourse to treatises on feudal land tenure and Scots law rather than English legal dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is principally English and Scottish in legal usage. In Scots law, fortalice appears in older property records and in discussions of tower houses and fortified manors that were common in Scottish landholding. American legal dictionaries carry the term as a historical entry with no operative modern application. Researchers should not expect the term to have meaningful significance in American property law sources.