Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning "that which may be bequeathed" — that is, property or an interest capable of being left by will to another person. The term functions as an adjective describing the quality of bequeatheability: whether a given asset or right was legally capable of passing through testamentary disposition.
Why It Matters in Research
Legabilis is a term of medieval and early modern legal Latin, and researchers are unlikely to encounter it outside of treatises, legal dictionaries, or older court records dealing with ecclesiastical or common law questions of testamentary capacity over property. Its primary research value is diagnostic: when you see legabilis in a historical source, the underlying question is almost certainly about the scope of testamentary power — what a testator could and could not freely dispose of by will.
This matters because the category of bequeatheability was not self-evident in early English law. Real property (land) was historically subject to its own rules of descent and was not freely devisable at common law until the Statute of Wills (1540). Personal property occupied a different regime, with ecclesiastical courts exercising jurisdiction over the probate of personal estates. The distinction between what was and was not legabilis therefore tracked the larger jurisdictional and doctrinal divide between realty and personalty — a divide that shapes how historical records are organized and where relevant documents will be found.
Researchers consulting early chancery records, ecclesiastical court records, or Year Books may encounter the term in disputes over whether a particular interest — a term for years, a chose in action, a copyhold — fell within the testator's power to bequeath. The answer was not always obvious and shifted over time.
Because legabilis appears only in old English legal sources and later in lexicographic collections, it has no living doctrinal significance. Modern legal research will not require the term itself, but understanding its meaning is essential for correctly interpreting historical documents in which it appears.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries converge on a single, brief definition: legabilis means "that which may be bequeathed," and all three attribute the usage to old English law, citing Cowell's Interpreter — the early seventeenth-century legal dictionary compiled by John Cowell, which remains a standard lexicographic reference for medieval and early modern English legal Latin.
The agreement across sources is complete and unsurprising for a narrow Latin term of this kind. None of the dictionaries expand on the substantive legal doctrine underlying the term — they record its meaning but do not explore which property was or was not legabilis under any given set of historical rules. Researchers should not expect the dictionary definitions alone to answer those doctrinal questions; the definitions simply confirm the term's basic function as a qualifier for testamentary capability.
Burrill's entry adds the explicit Latin derivation from legare (to bequeath), which is useful for researchers working with related terms in legal Latin documents, as legare and its derivatives appear in various testamentary contexts.
Jurisdictional Note
Legabilis is a term of old English legal Latin and has no recognized application in American law. Researchers working in early American colonial sources may encounter it only in materials directly borrowing from English legal tradition.