Definition
A monetary penalty imposed on a person who fled after committing murder. The term appears in Domesday Book records and reflects the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman practice of treating flight from a homicide as an independent legal wrong — one that attracted its own fine distinct from other punishments or compensatory obligations arising from the killing itself.
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Common Language
No common English usage exists for this term in either modern or historical general dictionaries. HENFARE is purely a term of historical legal record with no counterpart in ordinary speech.
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Why It Matters in Research
HENFARE is a terminal historical artifact: it belongs to the legal vocabulary of Domesday-era England and does not survive into any modern legal system. Researchers encountering it will almost exclusively do so in one context — the Domesday Book itself, or secondary scholarship on pre-Conquest and early Norman English law.
Several navigational cautions apply:
First, the Rapalje & Lawrence entry for HENFARE contains a significant editorial anomaly: the definition transitions mid-entry into language describing heralds and their functions in the law of nations. This appears to be a typesetting or transcription error, likely caused by adjacent entries bleeding together. The herald material has nothing to do with HENFARE and should be disregarded entirely.
Second, researchers should distinguish HENFARE from related Anglo-Saxon and Domesday penalty structures. The early Norman legal apparatus catalogued numerous overlapping fines and forfeitures triggered by homicide — including bloodwite, murdrum, and various amercements — and these could attach simultaneously or sequentially depending on circumstances. HENFARE specifically targets flight, not the act of killing itself, making it conceptually closer to the modern idea of obstruction or flight from justice than to homicide liability proper.
Third, because HENFARE appears primarily in Domesday Book records compiled in 1086, spelling variants should be expected in manuscript sources. Domesday Latin is highly compressed and inconsistent, and translators and editors across different published editions may render the underlying term differently.
Fourth, this term illustrates a broader pattern in early English law: conduct that signaled guilt — flight, concealment, failure to raise the hue and cry — was itself treated as legally cognizable and separately punishable, not merely as evidentiary. Understanding this structure is essential context for reading Domesday and related Norman-era legal records accurately.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core definition without variation: HENFARE is a fine for flight on account of murder, sourced to Domesday Book. The consensus across Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, and Rapalje & Lawrence is complete on this point, though none of the four entries provide meaningful elaboration beyond the one-line definition and citation.
None of the historical dictionary entries explain the penalty's magnitude, how it was assessed or collected, who the beneficiary of the fine was (the crown, the lord, or the victim's kin), or how HENFARE interacted with other homicide-related obligations. The historical sources treat it as a term requiring identification, not analysis. Researchers needing substantive treatment should turn to scholarship on Domesday Book law and Anglo-Norman legal history directly.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry is textually corrupted, as noted above. Researchers relying on that dictionary should treat the HENFARE entry as ending after the Domesday citation.
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Jurisdictional Note
HENFARE is specific to early medieval English law as recorded in Domesday Book. It has no equivalent in Scottish, Welsh, or Irish legal records of the period, and no counterpart in any modern jurisdiction.
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