Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "for one year and one [day]" — or, in its fuller reading, "for one year and one [other period]." The phrase appears in early English legal records in the context of gage (pledge) and related real property transactions, describing the duration for which land or goods were committed as security. The surviving fragment in Burrill — "In gage or" — suggests the phrase appeared in a formulaic writ or register entry describing the term of a pledge, likely one year and one additional unit of time (day, month, or term) running from a specified date.
The "year and a day" construction was a recurring structural element in medieval English law. It marked significant legal thresholds across several doctrines: the period after which unclaimed property escheated, the window within which a victim's death could be attributed to a prior assault for felony purposes, and the minimum period establishing certain rights in land. In unum annum et unum likely belongs to this family of fixed-term formulas used to define the outer boundary of a legal right or obligation in a pledge instrument.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is most likely to appear in early Year Books, plea rolls, and the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Register of Writs), from which Burrill's citation "Reg. Orig. 8 b" is drawn. Researchers encountering it in those sources should treat it as a formulaic element of a gage or pledge transaction rather than as a standalone legal rule.
The fragment preserved in Burrill is incomplete — the phrase trails off mid-entry ("In gage or"), which means the full legal context cannot be reconstructed from Burrill alone. Any research relying on the phrase for substantive legal content should go directly to the Register of Original Writs, folio 8b, and to contemporaneous treatises on the law of gage, including Glanvill and Bracton, which address the term structure of pledges in real property.
Researchers should also be cautious about the word "unum" at the end of the phrase. In Latin legal drafting, a terminal numeral or indefinite adjective often modified a following noun that has been dropped in the surviving fragment. The phrase may originally have read in unum annum et unum diem (one year and one day) or in unum annum et unum mensem (one year and one month), with the final noun present in the original writ but omitted by Burrill in his condensed entry.
The broader "year and a day" rule family is well-documented in secondary sources and connects this phrase to a cluster of related procedural and property doctrines in medieval English law. A researcher encountering in unum annum et unum in a manuscript or early printed source should cross-reference the surrounding text for the transaction type — gage, recognizance, or lease — before drawing conclusions about which specific rule applies.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only identified historical dictionary entry for this phrase. The entry is minimal: it offers the English translation "year and one," cites the Register of Original Writs at folio 8b, and fragments into the context "In gage or" without completing the sentence. This is consistent with Burrill's occasional practice of extracting Latin phrases from writ registers without full contextual explanation, relying on the reader's familiarity with the surrounding legal framework.
No entry appears in Bouvier, Black (early editions), or Jacob's Law Dictionary. The absence of the phrase from those dictionaries suggests it was recognized as highly technical register language rather than a term of general legal usage, and that its circulation was largely confined to conveyancing and writ practice sources of the medieval and early modern period.
Burrill's entry does not define the legal consequences of the period described — whether the pledge lapsed, converted, or triggered a right of redemption at its end — leaving the substantive legal rule to be sourced elsewhere.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase belongs to medieval English common law and writ practice. It has no direct counterpart in American law and would not appear in modern U.S. legal materials except in historical or comparative legal scholarship.