Definition
An archaic term from Old English legal sources referring to taxes. The word appears in historical records of Anglo-Saxon and early English fiscal administration, denoting a form of tribute or levy. It is encountered almost exclusively in antiquarian legal scholarship and is not operative in any modern legal system.
Why It Matters in Research
HUTILAN is a terminological fossil — a word that survives in legal dictionaries solely because early lexicographers transcribed it from medieval sources. Researchers will encounter it only when working in Anglo-Saxon legal history, ecclesiastical land records, or early English fiscal documents. The Black's Law Dictionary entry cites Monasticon Anglicanum (Mon. Angl. i. 586), a major seventeenth-century compilation of English monastic records edited by William Dugdale and Roger Dodsworth; any researcher seeking the original context of this term should consult that source directly. The citation pattern in both editions of Black's is identical and minimal, suggesting the entry was carried forward without independent verification or expansion. Be alert to the fact that both editions run the HUTILAN entry directly into the following entry (HWATA, HWATUNG), creating a typographic ambiguity: the definitions of two separate terms appear in near-continuous text, and a careless reader might conflate them or misread the boundary between entries. HUTILAN means taxes; HWATA/HWATUNG means augury or divination — they are unrelated.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's are in agreement on the substance: HUTILAN denotes taxes, with the sole citation being Monasticon Anglicanum i. 586. Neither edition elaborates on the nature of the tax, its rate, its subject class, or the period of its use. This parsimony is itself informative — it signals that even the leading legal lexicographers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had no richer secondary literature to draw upon. The term does not appear to have attracted commentary in treatises on Anglo-Saxon law available to Black's editors. Researchers should not expect to find HUTILAN in standard modern dictionaries of Old English or in general tax law references; its presence in Black's is almost entirely a product of the dictionary's comprehensive antiquarian ambitions rather than any ongoing practical relevance.
Jurisdictional Note
HUTILAN is a historical English term with no recognized counterpart in American, Commonwealth, or modern English law. It is relevant only to scholarly research into pre-Conquest or early post-Conquest English legal and fiscal history.