LAUREL - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

LAURELAuthored

The Law Mind • 752 words

Definition

A historical English gold coin minted in 1619 under King James I, valued at twenty shillings (equivalent to approximately five dollars at the time of Bouvier's writing). The coin took its name from the distinctive design feature on its obverse: the king's head was wreathed with a laurel crown rather than the traditional royal crown used on earlier English coinage. The laurel was minted as part of a broader series of gold coinage during the Jacobean period and is primarily of numismatic and historical financial interest.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A laurel is chiefly understood as a type of evergreen shrub (Laurus nobilis), and by extension, a symbol of honor or achievement. In modern usage, the term most often appears in figurative or idiomatic contexts ("resting on one's laurels").

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's recognizes the coin sense directly, defining the laurel as "an English gold coin made in 1619, and so called because the king's head on it was crowned with laurel." The figurative sense of honor and distinction was equally recognized.

The legal significance of the term is narrow and distinct from both the botanical and figurative senses. In legal and commercial documents of the early seventeenth century, laurel denoted a specific monetary unit with a fixed value, not an honor or a plant. A researcher encountering the term in a contract, estate inventory, or commercial dispute from the Jacobean period must read it as a denomination, not a metaphor.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers are most likely to encounter laurel as a monetary denomination in primary sources from the early Stuart period — wills, inventories, merchant accounts, and debt instruments dating roughly from 1619 through the mid-seventeenth century. The coin's value was fixed at twenty shillings, placing it within the broader English gold coin hierarchy of the period.

The principal research trap is contextual misreading. In historical legal documents, laurel may appear alongside other contemporaneous English gold denominations (the unite, the sovereign, the angel) without further explanation. A researcher unfamiliar with the coinage history of James I's reign may misread a bequest or debt figure if laurel is construed as a figurative term rather than a monetary unit.

The term is unlikely to appear in legal sources after the mid-seventeenth century as a live monetary denomination. Its appearance in later documents is probably historical or archival in character. Bouvier's inclusion of the term reflects his comprehensive approach to vocabulary appearing in older English legal instruments that American lawyers might encounter when tracing title, probate chains, or commercial records with English antecedents.

No significant jurisdictional variation applies; the coin was English and the denomination does not persist into American law as an operative unit.

Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the sole historical legal source in the Law Mind corpus for this term. Bouvier's treatment is brief and accurate: he identifies the coin, its date of minting, its issuing monarch, its value in shillings and approximate dollar equivalent, and the origin of its name. The entry is consistent with Webster's 1913, which independently confirms both the numismatic definition and the derivation from the laurel wreath on the coin's design.

No legal dictionary in the corpus engages with the laurel beyond this basic numismatic identification. This is appropriate — the term has no doctrinal content and carries no analytical weight in legal reasoning. Historical legal dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (outside the Law Mind corpus) similarly treat such coin names as vocabulary aids rather than legal concepts.

What historical sources do not address is the practical context in which the term would appear in legal instruments — how it interacted with monetary conversion, inflation, or valuation disputes when older documents were construed in later proceedings. Researchers needing that context should consult specialized numismatic histories of Stuart-era English coinage rather than legal dictionaries.

LAURELmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

An English gold coin worth twenty shillings, or about five dollars, coined in 1619 by James I., so-called because the head of the king was wreathed with lau- rel, and not crowned as on English coins.

LAURELn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

An evergreen shrub, of the genus Laurus (L. nobilis), having aromatic leaves of a lanceolate shape, with clusters of small, yellowish white flowers in their axils; -- called also sweet bay. A crown of laurel; hence, honor; distinction; fame; -- especially in the plural; as, to win laurels. An English gold coin made in 1619, and so called because the king's head on it was crowned with laurel. Laurel water, water distilled from the fresh leaves of the cherry laurel, and containing prussic acid and other products carried over in the process. American laurel, or Mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia. See under Mountain.  -- California laurel, Umbellularia Californica.  -- Cherry laurel (in England called laurel). See under Cherry.  -- Great laurel, the rosebay (Rhododendron maximum).  -- Ground laurel, trailing arbutus.  -- New Zealand laurel, Laurelia Novæ Zelandiæ.  -- Portugal laurel, the Prunus Lusitanica.  -- Rose laurel, the oleander. See Oleander.  -- Sheep laurel, a poisonous shrub, Kalmia angustifolia, smaller than the mountain laurel, and with smaller and redder flowers.  -- Spurge laurel, Daphne Laureola.  -- West Indian laurel, Prunus occidentalis.

Laurelname

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

A female or male given name from English from the laurel plant. | A surname from Spanish. | A municipality of the Philippines; named for Miguel Laurel. | A neighbourhood of Edmonton, Alberta. | A number of places in the United States: | A ghost town in Santa Cruz County, California. | A number of places in the United States: | A neighborhood of Oakland, California. | A number of places in the United States: | A town in Delaware; named for the laurel bushes growing in the area. | A number of places in the United States: | A census-designated place in Florida. | A number of places in the United States: | A town in Indiana; named for the city in Maryland. | A number of places in the United States: | A city in Iowa; named for the community in Ohio. | A number of places in the United States: | A city in Maryland. | A number of places in the United States: | A city in and one of the two county seats of Jones County, Mississippi; named for the laurel thickets in the area. | A number of places in the United States: | A city in Montana; named for the laurel bushes growing in the area. | A number of places in the United States: | A city in Nebraska; named for early settler Laura Martin. | A number of places in the United States: | A hamlet in New York. | A number of places in the United States: | An unincorporated community in Ohio. | A number of places in the United States: | An unincorporated community in Oregon; named for the trees growing in the area, thought to be laurels (later identified as madrones). | A number of places in the United States: | An unincorporated community in Tennessee. | A number of places in the United States: | A census-designated place in Virginia. | A number of places in the United States: | An unincorporated community in Washington. | A number of places in the United States: | An unincorporated community in West Virginia. | A number of places in the United States: | A river flowing from Lake, Kentucky into the Cumberland at Corbin, Kentucky.

Laurelnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Formerly, a participant aged sixteen or seventeen years old in the Young Women organization of the LDS Church.

laurelnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

An evergreen shrub of species Laurus nobilis, having aromatic leaves of a lanceolate shape, with clusters of small, yellowish white flowers in their axils. | A crown of laurel. | Honor, distinction, fame. | Any plant of the family Lauraceae. | Any of various plants of other families that resemble laurels. | An English gold coin made in 1619, and so called because the king's head on it was crowned with laurel.

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