Definition
Frank chase (also rendered *libera chacea* in Law Latin) is a historical English common law franchise — a liberty granted by royal authority — entitling the holder to maintain a chase over a defined territory. A chase was an open, unenclosed tract of land preserved for the keeping and hunting of deer and other wild game. Unlike a royal forest, which was subject to the forest law of the Crown and held by the king, a chase was typically held by a subject under royal grant. The franchise of frank chase gave the grantee the right to exclude others from hunting within that territory and to exercise certain jurisdictional powers necessary for its governance and preservation.
The word "frank" in this context carries its archaic legal sense of free or privileged — meaning the holder possessed the right freely, as a franchise, rather than by mere permission or sufferance. The phrase thus means, essentially, a free or privileged chase held as a recognized legal liberty.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Frank" in modern English primarily means candid, open, or honest in expression. "Chase" means to pursue something, or colloquially a pursuit itself.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 preserves the older sense of "chase" as an area of unenclosed land reserved for game, noting it as a legal and hunting term. "Frank" in Webster's is listed with the archaic meaning of free or liberal, particularly in compounds.
The compound "frank chase" has no meaningful modern common-language usage. A researcher encountering this term in historical documents should resist the instinct to parse the two words separately in their modern senses. The legal meaning is a single, unified franchise concept — a specific species of property right in land — wholly disconnected from the conversational meanings of either word.
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Common Confusion
Frank chase is frequently encountered alongside related but distinct game-law franchises: free warren, free fishery, and park. These are not interchangeable. A *free warren* pertained to smaller game (rabbit, pheasant, partridge) on enclosed or defined ground. A *park* was enclosed land for deer, held by a pale or fence. A *chase* was unenclosed and larger in scope than a park, but unlike a royal forest it was not subject to forest law courts. Researchers in historical land records, manor documents, or patent rolls should be careful not to conflate these franchises, as each carried distinct rights, limitations, and modes of acquisition.
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Why It Matters in Research
Frank chase appears almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal materials: royal grants and patents, manor court records, Domesday-derived surveys, and treatises on real property and game law. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus are most likely to encounter the term in:
- Historical real property materials discussing ancient franchises and liberties
- Treatments of English common law antecedents to American property and game law doctrines
- General discussions of the feudal tenure system and the bundle of rights attached to land
A key research trap: American law largely did not transplant the franchise system for game and hunting in its English form. Early American courts and legislatures generally treated wild game as a public resource subject to state regulation rather than private franchise. A researcher reading English common law sources on chases must be cautious about assuming any direct American legal analog.
The term is largely absent from American legal sources after the colonial period. If it appears in an American source, it is almost certainly in a historical or comparative context, or in the treatment of colonial-era grants.
Frank chase also illustrates the broader category of *liberties and franchises* — a subject with significant implications for understanding how English common law conceived of rights in land and in natural resources as distinct, grantable legal interests. Researchers pursuing that larger topic will find frank chase as one specimen in a taxonomy that also includes parks, warrens, fisheries, and forest rights.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary defines frank chase as "free chase" — the liberty or franchise of having a chase — and supplies the Law Latin equivalent *libera chacea*. This entry, while brief, is precise and accurate. It correctly situates the concept as a franchise (a right held of the Crown, not an inherent ownership) and flags the Latin form that researchers will encounter in original grants and writs.
Burrill does not elaborate on the distinctions between chase, park, warren, and forest, which are essential for a researcher trying to classify or compare these rights. Historical treatises — particularly those in the tradition of Manwood's *Treatise of the Forest Laws* (1598, expanded 1615) and later Blackstone's *Commentaries* (Book II) — provide more granular treatment of how chases differed from royal forests in terms of jurisdiction and governance. Neither source is reproduced in Burrill's entry, but both are foundational reference points for this subject.
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Jurisdictional Note
Frank chase is an English legal concept with no direct American statutory or common law counterpart. It may appear in American legal history materials addressing colonial land grants derived from English royal charters, but it did not survive as an operative legal category in American law. Research involving this term is, for practical purposes, confined to English legal history.
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