LANCETI

4 definitions found across Law Mind sources

LANCETIAuthored
The Law Mind • 457 words
Definition
A class of feudal vassals obligated to perform weekly agricultural labor for their lord. Lanceti were bound to work one day per week for their lord from Michaelmas (September 29) through autumn, performing whatever manual task the lord directed — plowing with a fork, digging with a spade, or threshing with a flail — at the lord's sole discretion. The term belongs to the vocabulary of medieval English and continental feudal tenure and has no application in modern law.
Why It Matters in Research
Lanceti appears almost exclusively as a terminus technicus in historical and feudal law sources. Researchers are unlikely to encounter it outside antiquarian legal dictionaries or scholarship on villeinage and feudal tenure arrangements. Its significance is comparative: understanding lanceti helps situate the spectrum of labor obligations that ran from free tenure through various grades of villein service. Researchers working on manorial records, customary tenure disputes, or the history of agricultural labor obligations should treat lanceti as one node in a larger vocabulary of feudal service terms — alongside terms like villeinage, socage, bordage, and cottar tenure — rather than as a standalone operative concept. The term will not appear in case law or statute books; its natural habitat is Spelman's Glossarium (the authority cited uniformly across all four source dictionaries) and secondary works on feudal land law. No modern legal significance attaches to it.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — Black's (both editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier — converge on a nearly identical definition, and all cite the same single authority: Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum. The unanimity is notable but reflects the term's narrow and uncontested historical meaning rather than independent verification across sources. None of the dictionaries elaborate on how lanceti fit within the broader hierarchy of feudal service obligations, nor do they distinguish whether the term applied uniformly across jurisdictions or was specific to particular regions of England or the continent. Bouvier adds a brief cross-reference to adjacent terms (Lanes, Dez and Lanns Mannus) without further developing the lanceti entry. Rapalje & Lawrence similarly positions the entry among cognate feudal vocabulary terms (Laghslite, Lagon, Lagu) without analytical expansion. Black's both editions truncate the entry mid-paragraph, transitioning immediately to the entry for LAND — suggesting the editors treated lanceti as a minor historical gloss rather than a term requiring substantive treatment. No source addresses the term's geographical reach, its relationship to villeinage proper, or whether lanceti were distinguishable from other obligatory laborers (such as bordarii or cotarii) by anything beyond the specific weekly labor formula.
Related Terms
Villeinage Socage Serfdom Bordage Copyhold Manorial tenure Michaelmas (as a legal term day) Tenure Customary tenure Services (feudal)
LANCETImain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
In feudal law. Vassals who were obliged to work for their lord one day in the week, from Michaelmas to autumn, either with fork, spade, or flail, at the lord's option. Spelman. LAND, in the most general sense, compre- hends any ground, soil, or earth whatsoever; as meadows, pastures, woods, moors, waters, marshes, furzes, and heath. Co. Litt. 4a. The word "land" includes not only the soil, but everything attached to it, whether attached by the course of nature, as trees, herbage, and water, or by the hand of man, as buildings and fences. 1 N. Y. 572; 2 Bl. Comm. 16, 17. Land is the solid material of the earth, whatever may be the ingredients of which it is composed,
LANCETImain
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910
In feudal law. Vassals who were obliged to work for their lord one day in the week, from Michaelmas to autumn, either with fork, spade, or flail, at the lord’s option. Spelman. LAND, in the most general sense, comprehends any ground, soil, or earth whatsoever 5 us meadows, pastures, woods, moors, waters, marshes, furzes, and heath. Co. Litt. 4a. The word “land” includes not only the soil, but everything attached to it, whether attached by the course of nature, as trees, herbage, and water, or by the hand of man, as buildings and fences. Mott v. Palmer, 1 N. Y. 572; Nessler v. Neher, 18 Neb. 649, 26 N. W. 4713 Higgins Fuel Co. v. Snow, 113 Fed. 433, 51 C. C. A. 267; Lightfoot v. Grove, 5 Heisk. (Tenn.) 477; Johnson v. Richardson, 83 Miss. 464; Mitchell v. Warner, 5 Conn. 517; Myers v. League, 62 Fed. 659, 10 C. CG. A. 871. 2 Bl. Comm. 16, 17. Land is the solid material of the earth, whatever may be the ingredients of which it is composed, whether soil, rock, or other substance. Civ. Code Cal. § 659. Philosophically, it seems more correct to say that the word “land’’ means, in law,-as in the vernacular, the soil, or portion of the earth’s crust; and to explain or justify such expressions as that “whoever owns the land owns the buildings above and the minerals below,” upon the view, not that these are within the extension of the term “land,” but that they are so connected with it that by rules of law they pass by a conveyance of the land. This view makes “land,” as a term, narrower in signification than “realty;’? though it would allow an instrument speaking of land to operate co-extensively with one granting realty or real property by either of those terms. ut many of the authorities use the expression “land” as including these incidents to the soil. Abbott. —Accommodation lands. .In English law. Lands bought by a builder or speculator, who erects houses thereon, and then leases portions of them upon an improved ground-rent.—Bounty lands. Portions of the public domain given or donated to private persons as a bounty for services rendered, chiefly for military service. —Certificate lands. In Pennsylvania, in the period succeeding the revolution, lands set apart in the western portion of the state, which might be bought with the certificates which the soldiers of that state in the revolutionary army had received in lien of pay. Cent. Dict. —Crown lands. In England and Canada, lands belonging to the sovereign personally or to the government or nation, as distinguished from such as have passed into private ownership—Demesne lands. See DEMESNE.—Domation lands. Lands granted from the public domain to an individual as a bounty, gift, or donation; particularly, in early Pennsylvania history, lands thus granted to soldiers of the revolutionary war.—Fabric lands. In English law, lands given towards the maintenance, rebuilding, or repairing of cathedral and other .churches.—General land office. An office of the United States government, being a division of the department of the interior, having charge of all executive action relating to the public lands, including their survey, sale or other disposition, and patenting; constituted by act of congress in 1812 (Rev, St. § 446 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 255]) and presided over by an officer styled ‘commissioner of the general land office.”— Land certificate. Upon the registration of freehold land under the English land transfer
LANCETImain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883
- Vassals who were obliged to LAGHSLITE-A breach of law; a punwork for their lord one day in the week, from ishment for breaking the law. Cowell. Michaelmas to autumn, either with fork, spade, or flail, at the lord's option.-Spel. Gloss. LAGON.- See LAGAN. LAGU.-Law; also used to express the territory or district in which a particular law was in force, as Denalagu, Mercna lagu, &c., which may be looked upon as abbreviated forms of the district under Danish law, Mercian law, &c., without supposing, with Bishop Nicholson, that in these instances the word lagu does not stand for "law," but for regio provinciæ. See DANEL-

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