Definition
In historical English legal usage, gloves appear in two distinct ceremonial and customary contexts: (1) the white gloves ceremony at a maiden assize, and (2) the removal of the glove from the right hand when taking an oath.
(1) Maiden Assize Custom. When a judge arrived at an assize circuit and found no criminal defendant to be tried — a so-called "maiden assize" — the sheriff would ceremonially present the judge with a pair of white gloves. The gift signified that the court's hands were clean: no blood would be shed, no punishment administered that session. The custom was a mark of distinction for the county, reflecting that no serious crime had required judicial intervention since the last sitting.
(2) Oath-Taking Custom. It was an immemorial common law custom to bare the right hand — removing any glove — when administering a sworn oath. The gesture required physical contact between the ungloved hand and the Bible or other holy text, reinforcing the personal, solemn character of the oath. The custom reflected the understanding that an oath was a direct physical and spiritual act, not a mediated or symbolic one.
Neither usage survives in active modern practice, but both appear regularly in historical legal sources describing English assize procedure and oath administration.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of glove; a garment covering the hand.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A cover for the hand, with a separate sheath for each finger, made of leather, silk, or other material.
The gap between ordinary and legal meaning here is not definitional but contextual. The word carries its plain sense — a hand covering — but acquires specialized legal significance through two distinct ceremonial customs that would be invisible to a reader approaching the term without knowledge of assize procedure or oath-taking practice. A researcher encountering "gloves" in a legal source must determine which custom is at play.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in English legal history, particularly sources touching on assize circuits, judicial ceremony, or oath administration, will encounter gloves as a term of art embedded in procedural description rather than doctrine. Several navigational points:
Maiden assize records. Accounts of maiden assizes appear in judicial circuit records, judges' diaries, and local histories from the 17th through 19th centuries. The white gloves ceremony is the signal that a county returned no criminal business for that sitting. A researcher reading such a record without knowing the custom may misread the reference as incidental color rather than a formal procedural marker.
Oath-taking sources. The ungloved right hand requirement surfaces in treatises on evidence and procedure. It connects to broader questions about the validity of oaths administered under irregular circumstances — a genuine evidentiary issue in historical cases where a witness's oath might be challenged on technical grounds.
Absence from modern sources. Neither Black's Law Dictionary in its modern editions nor contemporary procedural treatises carry these entries. The customs are documented almost exclusively in historical dictionaries and older English legal literature. Researchers relying solely on modern reference tools will find no entry and may conclude the term has no legal valence.
Wharton as the cited authority. Both Black's editions and Rapalje & Lawrence attribute these usages to Wharton's Law Lexicon, the standard English legal dictionary of the 19th century. Tracing claims about these customs back to Wharton — rather than to primary legal authority — is important: these entries describe ceremonial practice, not enforceable rules, and Wharton himself was synthesizing customary description rather than citing adjudicated doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence carry identical text, all attributed to Wharton. The uniformity is not independent corroboration — it reflects standard 19th-century American legal lexicography drawing from a shared English source rather than independent research. No divergence exists among the three sources because they share a single origin.
What the historical dictionaries do well is preserve the two customs as discrete entries, linking them to assize procedure and oath administration respectively. What they omit is any procedural consequence: no source explains what happened if gloves were not presented at a maiden assize, or whether an oath administered without removing the glove was voidable. The customs appear to have been matters of form and tradition rather than legally enforceable requirements with defined consequences for breach.
The second edition of Black's appends the entry for GLYN (a hollow between mountains) immediately following, reflecting the alphabetical proximity in the original source — a reminder that historical dictionary entries often run together and require careful reading to separate distinct terms.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Assize Courts; Oath and Affirmation (Historical Practice)