Definition
A Latin genitive plural meaning "of fugitives." In legal usage, *fugitivorum* appears principally as a possessive modifier in phrases describing the legal treatment of property belonging to persons who have fled from justice — most commonly those who absconded to avoid prosecution for felony. The classic formulation is *bona fugitivorum* (goods of fugitives), referring to the property subject to forfeiture or crown seizure when its owner fled rather than submit to trial.
Under early English law, a person who fled upon accusation of felony — as distinct from one who formally abjured the realm or was outlawed — forfeited their goods and chattels to the crown or to the lord of the fee. The term *fugitivorum* captures the possessive dimension of that doctrine: the goods were categorized and treated specifically as the property of those who had fled, with distinct rules governing their seizure, administration, and ultimate disposition.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a research artifact of medieval and early modern English legal sources. Researchers encountering *fugitivorum* or *bona fugitivorum* in historical records — particularly in Year Books, Plea Rolls, or treatises on forfeiture — should understand that the term marks a specific procedural and substantive status distinct from attainder, outlawry, or conviction. The fugitive had not been convicted; flight itself triggered the forfeiture of personalty, but the rules governing real property differed and were more limited than those applied to attainted felons.
The principal research trap is conflating *fugitivorum* with the broader forfeiture doctrine attached to outlawry or attainder. A person outlawed had gone through a formal process of proclamation and default; a fugitive in the *fugitivorum* sense had simply fled. The legal consequences, while overlapping, were not identical, and the distinction matters when tracing property records or understanding why a particular estate appears in crown accounts.
Researchers working in equity records or ecclesiastical sources may find the term used loosely to cover any absconder, which can obscure the technical common-law meaning. Cross-referencing with *bona* (goods) entries and forfeiture schedules in the relevant court records will usually clarify which doctrine is actually being applied.
Because this is a purely Latin technical phrase with no modern statutory survival in Anglo-American law, it will not appear in post-nineteenth-century practice materials. Its natural habitat is the printed Year Books, Bracton, Britton, Fleta, and the forfeiture sections of Coke's Institutes.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary gives the entry tersely: "Lat. In goods of fugitives; the property of him who flies for felony." The citation reference (5) points to a source Burrill does not fully expand in the surviving extract, but the definition aligns with the treatment in standard medieval common-law authorities. Burrill captures the essential meaning accurately but without the procedural texture that distinguishes the fugitive's forfeiture from other modes of property loss by operation of law.
What Burrill and similar nineteenth-century dictionaries do not address is the gradual contraction of the doctrine. As English criminal procedure formalized and the distinction between flight before and after indictment hardened, the practical scope of *bona fugitivorum* as an independent forfeiture category narrowed considerably. By the time Burrill compiled his dictionary, the term was already historical rather than operational, which may explain the brevity of the entry.
No significant divergence appears across the historical dictionaries that treat this term — it is narrow enough that compilers generally agreed on its scope. The more informative treatment is found not in the dictionaries but in the forfeiture chapters of Bracton's *De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae* and in Coke's discussion of felony and its consequences in the *Institutes*.
Jurisdictional Note
This doctrine is rooted in English common law and has no direct modern equivalent in American or Commonwealth jurisdictions. American law abolished most felony forfeiture of personal estate at common law, and the term *fugitivorum* has no operational legal meaning in contemporary U.S., Canadian, or Australian practice. It appears only in historical legal research contexts.