Definition
A member of a household; a domestic; one belonging to a family. The term appears in early legal usage to denote a person who is part of a domestic unit or household, as distinguished from a stranger or outsider. It carries the sense of a person under the roof and within the legal or social sphere of a family.
Common Confusion
Researchers should not conflate this term with broader concepts of domestic servitude, villeinage, or serfdom. "One of a family" or "a domestic" in this early usage denotes household membership or domestic status generally — it does not specify the legal relationship of servitude, employment, or kinship that defined the person's place within the household. The precise legal consequences of being a "hurdereferst" in any given context depend entirely on the body of law governing that household relationship in the relevant time and place.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will rarely appear in modern legal materials and is essentially archaic. Researchers encountering it should treat it as a signal that the surrounding text dates from an early period of English or Anglo-Saxon legal development. Its presence in a document may indicate rules or customs governing household membership, domestic relations, or household liability — areas where the status of being "of the family" carried distinct legal consequences, including questions of agency, responsibility, and privilege.
The term should not be searched in modern statutory indexes or case law databases; it will not appear there. Researchers working in early English legal records, manorial documents, or Anglo-Norman legal texts are the most likely to encounter it. When found, the relevant analytical question is what legal consequences attached to household membership in the specific jurisdiction and period under examination — not the bare meaning of the word itself.
Note that Bouvier's Law Dictionary includes under this general subject area a discussion of hunting rights and the status of game (ferae naturae), which is unrelated to the household-membership definition. Researchers should be careful not to conflate the two entries, which appear to reflect a cataloging proximity in Bouvier's rather than any substantive connection.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core definition: a domestic, one of a family. Black's Law Dictionary and Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) are virtually identical in their entries, offering no elaboration beyond that brief gloss. Bouvier's Law Dictionary confirms the same definition.
The historical dictionaries provide no discussion of the term's origins, its procedural significance, or the legal consequences that flowed from a person holding this status. This is a notable gap. In early English law, household membership was not merely a social fact but a legal one, affecting liability for wrongs committed by household members, the scope of the master's authority, and questions of sanctuary or protection. None of the source dictionaries address these dimensions, leaving the researcher to rely on primary sources and specialized historical scholarship for substantive analysis.
The Bouvier's entry that pivots to hunting rights and ferae naturae appears to be an artifact of dictionary organization and should not be read as legally connected to the household-membership definition of this term.