Definition
Lealte (Law French) refers to legality in the sense of full legal standing — specifically, the condition of being a *legalis homo*, or "lawful man." The term describes the status of a person who enjoys the complete protection and recognition of the law: one who is neither outlawed, excommunicated, attainted, nor otherwise stripped of legal capacity. A person possessed of lealte could sue in court, serve on juries, take oaths, and hold legal rights. Loss of that status — through outlawry or attainder, for example — was loss of lealte.
Common Language
This is pure legal jargon derived from Law French with no meaningful common English counterpart. The section is omitted.
Why It Matters in Research
Lealte is primarily an archaic Law French term encountered in medieval and early common law sources. Researchers working with early English legal records, Year Books, or treatises on the common law of status and capacity should recognize it as a technical descriptor of legal personhood rather than a general synonym for honesty or loyalty.
The critical research trap is conflating lealte with its apparent cognates. The word looks related to "loyal" or "loyalty" in its French root — and indeed shares an etymology — but in legal usage it carries a precise technical meaning about legal standing, not personal fidelity or allegiance. A text describing someone as lacking lealte is not commenting on their character; it is making a statement about their juridical capacity.
Researchers should also note that lealte functions as the abstract noun paired with *legalis homo*. When you encounter one term in a source, the other is likely nearby. Understanding lealte requires understanding what it meant to be — or cease to be — a legalis homo: the conditions that created, suspended, or destroyed full legal personhood in the medieval common law.
Because the term is essentially obsolete after the displacement of Law French from English legal practice (largely complete by the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), lealte will not appear in modern statutes or cases. Its corpus presence is confined to historical sources, glossaries of Law French, and scholarly commentary on early common law.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (both editions) and Burrill — give identical entries: Law French, meaning legality, defined as the condition of a legalis homo or lawful man. There is no divergence among the sources and no elaboration in any of them beyond this bare definition. The uniformity is itself informative: these were already archaic, backward-looking glosses by the time the dictionaries were compiled, recording a historical term rather than a living one.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply — and what a researcher must seek elsewhere — is any account of what precisely could defeat lealte: outlawry, excommunication, attainder, villeinage, and other conditions that stripped or diminished legal capacity in medieval English law. For that content, sources such as Bracton's *De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae* and Glanvill's *Tractatus de Legibus* are the appropriate references.
Jurisdictional Note
Lealte is a term of English common law origin. It has no independent development in American law and no meaningful presence in civil law jurisdictions. Researchers in Scottish, Irish, or colonial legal records may encounter it, but only as an import from English common law sources.