Definition
An obsolete Law French term meaning a thing stolen, or stolen goods. The term appears in early Norman legal texts and refers to the object of theft itself — the stolen property — rather than the act of stealing. As a substantive noun, *larecin* denotes the res, not the offense.
Common Confusion
Modern readers may encounter *larecin* and assume it is a variant spelling of *larceny*, the criminal offense. The terms share a common root but are grammatically and functionally distinct. *Larceny* (from Law Latin *latrocinium*) names the crime; *larecin* names the thing taken. A researcher encountering *larecin* in a Norman or early English legal text is reading about stolen goods as physical evidence or subject matter of a legal proceeding, not a formal charge of theft.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-Conquest or early post-Conquest English legal sources — particularly texts recording Norman customs applied in England — will encounter *larecin* in procedural and evidentiary contexts. The phrase *si larecin est troved* (if a thing stolen is found) signals provisions governing discovery of stolen property, not conviction for theft. This distinction matters when tracing the development of early property recovery procedures, the handling of *fresh suit*, or the legal consequences of possession of stolen goods before the criminal law of larceny was fully systematized.
The term belongs to a cluster of Law French vocabulary that was functional in English courts from the Norman Conquest through roughly the sixteenth century. After Law French fell out of practical use, *larecin* disappeared from legal writing entirely. It will not appear in post-Reformation sources. Researchers should not expect to find it in common law reports from the seventeenth century onward.
Because *larecin* survived primarily in the context of customary law texts and Norman legislation recorded in Latin-French hybrid instruments, it may appear in sources catalogued under either French or Latin legal vocabulary. Cross-referencing under *larceny*, *stolen goods*, and *furtum* (the Latin counterpart) will recover related materials.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill records *larecin* concisely as "a thing stolen," with the illustrative phrase drawn from the Laws of William the Conqueror (*Leges Willelmi Conquestoris*), a collection of customary rules attributed to the Norman settlement of England. Burrill's entry is brief but precise in identifying the term as substantive rather than adjectival — it names the stolen object as a legal category, not merely a descriptive fact.
No other dictionary in the Law Mind corpus provides an independent entry for *larecin*. The term is absent from later common law dictionaries, which reflects its obsolescence well before the period those works addressed. Burrill's inclusion is valuable precisely because his dictionary reaches further into Law French and Norman-era vocabulary than most of his contemporaries.
The Leges Willelmi Conquestoris citation is notable: these laws, though their authenticity and precise dating have been debated by legal historians, represent an important documentary layer for understanding how Norman legal concepts were transplanted onto Anglo-Saxon legal custom. The phrase Burrill quotes illustrates a conditional procedural rule — what follows when stolen goods are discovered — suggesting that *larecin* had operative legal meaning in determining liability, not merely descriptive meaning.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is specific to the Norman-influenced legal tradition of medieval England. It has no independent life in continental French law as a technical term within Law Mind corpus sources. Researchers working in Scottish, Irish, or Welsh legal history should not assume the term carried identical meaning in those traditions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See LARCENY for the substantive criminal offense to which *larecin* is historically connected. See also STOLEN GOODS for the property law treatment of objects taken by theft.