FRANCHILANUS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

FRANCHILANUSAuthored

The Law Mind • 668 words

Definition

A Latin term of medieval English law denoting a freeman or free tenant. The term appears in historical charters and legal instruments to distinguish persons of free status from villeins and other unfree tenants. A franchilanus held land by free tenure and enjoyed the personal liberties associated with that status, as opposed to the servile obligations attached to villein tenure.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encountering this term will find it almost exclusively in Latin charter sources, particularly documents of the medieval period. The term is a marker of tenure and personal status simultaneously — in the feudal framework, the two were closely linked. When reading a grant or conveyance that enumerates both villeins and a franchilanus by name, as in the Burrill example drawn from Monasticon Anglicanum, the term signals that the named individual was being conveyed or acknowledged alongside the villein population but with a legally distinct standing.

The term connects directly to the broader franchise/frank lexical family. Researchers should be aware that franchilanus, frankleyne, frankelein, and franklyn appear in overlapping periods and sources as variant renderings of the same underlying concept — the free tenant of middling rank. The spelling and Latinization vary considerably across manuscript sources, so corpus searches should account for these variant forms. A search limited to franchilanus alone will miss the bulk of relevant material in English-language sources.

This term has no meaningful modern survival. It is a dead technical term useful primarily for interpreting pre-modern English land records and the historical legal dictionaries that glossed them. Its presence in the major historical dictionaries (Black's, Bouvier's, Burrill's, Rapalje & Lawrence) reflects the nineteenth-century project of cataloging the Latin and Norman-French vocabulary of English legal records rather than any continuing practical application.

Historical Dictionary Support

The five source dictionaries are in substantial agreement: franchilanus means a freeman or free tenant. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's give the same terse two-part definition — freeman by Carta Henrici IV, free tenant by Spelman — without elaboration. Rapalje & Lawrence places the term in direct sequence with its entry on FRANCHISE, noting the shared Norman-French root (fraunc, free) and directing readers to LIBERTY, which correctly situates franchilanus within a cluster of concepts about free status and privilege.

Burrill provides the most substantive treatment. He supplies the actual Latin text of a charter — drawn from Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum — in which the term appears alongside villeins, and he cross-references Spelman's Reliquiae and Fortescue's De Laudibus Legum Angliae. The Burrill entry also explicitly equates franchilanus with franclaine, frankleyne, and frankelein, confirming that these are orthographic and linguistic variants rather than distinct legal categories. This is the most useful historical entry for a researcher attempting to trace the term across source types.

None of the dictionaries offer extended analysis of the legal incidents of free tenant status or the procedural distinctions between franchilanus and other tenure categories. For that doctrinal content, researchers must move to secondary treatises on feudal tenure rather than the dictionary literature.

Jurisdictional Note

Franchilanus is a term of English medieval law with no American legal counterpart. American law adopted the concept of free tenure but not this vocabulary. Researchers working in American legal sources will not encounter the term; it is relevant only to English historical records and the English common law background.

FRANCHILANUSmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

-A freeman.- Chart. Henry IV. A free tenant.-Spel. Gloss. FRANCHISE.-NORMAN-FRENCH: fraunchise, from fraunc, free. Britt. 29 b. See LIBERTY. 1. Franchise, in its general sense, is a iberty or privilege. ELECTION, 3; PARLIAMENT. 6. In American law, franchise means: (1) A particular privilege conferred upon individuals by grant from the government. (3) Kent Com. 458.) Franchises are usually held by corporations created for the purpose of enjoying them, such as railroad, steamboat, ferry and telegraph companies. (2) The elective franchise, or right to vote, which is enjoyed by all male wards, except unpardoned felons. 2. At common law, a franchise is a royal privilege or branch of the crown's prerogative, subsisting in the hands of a citizens of twenty-one years of age or upsubject, either by grant or by prescription. (2 Bl. Com. 37; Co. Litt. 114a.) Franchises are of two classes: (1) Those which originally formed part of the crown's prerogative, and could therefore be exercised by the king jure coronæ before they were granted to a subject; such as the franchises of waifs, estrays, wrecks, royal fish, forests, &c.; (2) those which can only be created by granting them to a subject; such as fairs, markets, tolls, parks, warrens, &c. (See the various titles.) The distinction is so far of importance that when a franchise of the former class is appendant to a manor, or the like, and they both come into the hands of the crown, the appendancy is extinguished, because the franchise merges in the prerogative; while in the case of a franchise of the latter class the appendancy would be preserved. Case of the Abbot of Strata Marcella, 9 Co. 23. See IN CAPITE. FRANCHISE, (defined). 13 Pet. (U. S.) 519, 595; 22 Cal. 398, 422; 25 Conn. 19, 36; 36 Id. 255, 266; 73 III. 541; 13 Bush (Ky.) 185, 189; 66 Me. 488; 45 Mo. 17, 20; 3 Duer (N. Y.) 119, 144; 15 Johns. (N. Y.) 387; 15 N. Y. 170; 5 Wend. (N. Y.) 211, 217; 15 Serg. & R. (Pa.) 130; Ang. & A. Corp. 2. (what is). 17 Conn. 40; 32 Ν. Η. 507; 3 Paige (N. Y.) 318; 11 East 168, 175. (what is not). 66 Me. 488, 512. (grant of). 3 Duer (N. Y.) 119. FRANCHISE, CORPORATE, (defined). 87 III. 317.