Definition
An Anglo-Saxon legal and military term denoting a going forth to war — specifically, a martial expedition or the act of joining an army on campaign. The Latin equivalent given in historical sources is profectio militaris, meaning a military going-out or departure for war. HEREFARE describes the act or fact of military departure rather than the campaign itself, and appears in early English legal records in contexts involving military service obligations, feudal duty, and the rights and liabilities that arose when a man joined a lord's army.
Common Confusion
HEREFARE is distinct from HERIOT (sometimes rendered HEREGEAT in older sources). Rapalje & Lawrence notes HEREGEAT — a heriot — immediately following HEREFARE, and the proximity of these terms in historical dictionaries has led to occasional conflation. HERIOT concerns the payment or render of goods (typically the best beast or chattel) due to a lord upon a tenant's death; HEREFARE concerns the act of military departure and expedition. The two share the Old English root here (army) but describe entirely different legal obligations.
Why It Matters in Research
HEREFARE is an arcane term of Anglo-Saxon origin with no continuing life in modern law. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in:
1. Pre-Conquest and early post-Conquest English legal records, charters, and law codes, where military service obligations were catalogued using Old English vocabulary.
2. Glossaries and commentaries on Domesday-era materials, where the term may appear in discussions of fyrd service, soke rights, or the incidents of tenure.
3. Secondary treatments of feudal military obligation, where historians and legal antiquarians trace the transition from Anglo-Saxon military custom to Norman feudal tenure.
The principal research trap is assuming the term carries a substantive legal meaning comparable to a defined modern doctrine. It does not. HEREFARE names a concept — the going to war — rather than establishing a specific legal test or remedy. Its significance is taxonomic and historical: it locates a class of obligation within the pre-Conquest framework of military service.
Researchers working backward through feudal tenure histories should note that Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum is the authority cited by all four source dictionaries, signaling that this term's primary scholarly treatment lies in early modern antiquarian work rather than case law or statute. Direct access to Spelman's Glossarium or to Cowell's Interpreter (cited by Rapalje & Lawrence) will provide the fullest treatment available.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree precisely on the definition: a going into or with an army; a going out to war; a military expedition. Black's (both editions) and Burrill's reproduce Spelman as the authority. Rapalje & Lawrence adds Cowell as a parallel source and uses the phrasing "a going to war" without the Latin gloss, slightly simplifying the entry.
Burrill's is the most informative of the four, explicitly parsing the word's components: here (army) and fare (a going), which illuminates the term's relationship to adjacent Old English legal vocabulary. This etymological gloss is genuinely useful to researchers because it helps identify cognate terms in manuscript sources — the root here appears in HERIOT (HEREGEAT), HEREBAN (army summons), and similar terms scattered through pre-Conquest legal records.
No source dictionary provides case law or statutory authority, which is expected: HEREFARE belongs to a class of historical legal vocabulary that was documented by antiquarians rather than adjudicated by courts. The consistent cross-reference to Spelman across multiple independent dictionaries confirms that Spelman's Glossarium is the foundational secondary source for this term.
Jurisdictional Note
HEREFARE is specific to pre-Conquest and early Norman English legal history. It has no recognized application in any modern common law jurisdiction and does not appear as a operative legal term in Scottish, Irish, or American legal traditions.