Definition
A term from old English law referring to a type of garment. The precise nature, cut, or function of the garment is not elaborated in surviving legal sources, and the term appears primarily as a historical curiosity preserved in legal dictionaries rather than as a concept with active doctrinal content. It is encountered almost exclusively in antiquarian legal texts and glossaries.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers are unlikely to encounter HERIGALDS outside of antiquarian glossaries, early English legal records, or historical inventories where garments formed part of an estate, bequest, or feudal obligation. If the term appears in a primary source — a medieval will, an inventory of goods, or a manorial record — it signals the document's age and the need to read it within the framework of early English property and probate practice, where specific items of clothing and dress could carry legal or customary significance (as heriot-related transfers or bequests in kind). The term has no modern legal application and should not be projected onto contemporary clothing or property law. Its chief research value is as a dating and contextual marker in historical documents.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary — provide identical, minimal definitions: a sort of garment in old English law, with attribution to Cowell (John Cowell's The Interpreter, 1607, an early English legal glossary). This uniform dependence on a single antiquarian source, with no independent elaboration across any of the three dictionaries, indicates that the term was already archaic and poorly understood even at the time these dictionaries were compiled. None of the sources specify the garment's form, the legal contexts in which it arose, or whether it carried specific legal consequences. The entry's presence in major legal dictionaries reflects the encyclopedic ambitions of those works rather than the term's practical importance.