Definition
An Anglo-Norman and Law French term meaning "line" — used in medieval and early English legal sources to denote a line of descent or lineage. In its legal context, ligne refers to the path through which inheritance passes, either directly from ancestor to descendant or laterally through collateral relatives. The term appears almost exclusively in Norman and early English customary law governing succession.
Two principal forms appear in the sources:
1. Ligne droicte (direct line): The line of descent running straight from ancestor to descendant — parent to child, grandparent to grandchild, and so forth. Succession through the ligne droicte was generally preferred in Norman custom.
2. Ligne collatérale (collateral line): The line connecting relatives who share a common ancestor but do not descend from one another — siblings, cousins, uncles, and aunts. Norman customary law treated collateral inheritance as secondary to the direct line.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A unit of length used for measuring the diameter of buttons; loosely, a synonym for "line" as an ill-defined unit of measurement.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; treated as a French form of "line."
The gap here is complete. In ordinary modern usage, ligne survives only as a technical unit of measurement in the button and textile trades. In law, it was never a unit of measurement — it referred exclusively to lineage and the structure of inheritance. A researcher encountering ligne in a legal source should read it as "line of descent," not as any unit of length or measure.
Why It Matters in Research
Ligne is a Law French fossil — it does not survive in modern legal usage and will not appear in contemporary statutes, case reporters, or secondary literature. Researchers will encounter it only in medieval Norman customary sources, early English legal treatises drawing on Norman authority, and glossaries of Law French and Anglo-Norman legal vocabulary.
The critical navigational point: sources citing la ligne collatérale, et non pas la ligne droicte (the collateral line, not the direct line) are typically working through questions of inheritance priority under Norman custom, particularly the Grand Coutumier de Normandie. This distinction between direct and collateral lines underpins much of the early English common law of descent — later absorbed and reformulated in Blackstone and the English inheritance statutes — but the vocabulary shifts dramatically. Researchers moving from Norman customary sources into later English sources must translate not just the word but the conceptual framework, since English common law developed its own terminology (lineal vs. collateral consanguinity) without retaining the French term.
Burrill's entry points to the Grand Coutumier de Normandie (ch. 25), Britton (c. 119), and Kelham's dictionary as the primary source cluster. Researchers working on Anglo-Norman succession law should treat these as a unit: the Grand Coutumier establishes the rule, Britton adapts it for English practice, and Kelham provides the terminological bridge.
Do not conflate this term with the modern French legal usage of ligne, which continues in civil law jurisdictions (particularly Quebec and Louisiana) in the context of degrees of relationship for inheritance and family law purposes. The conceptual content is related, but the doctrinal context differs.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical shelf source for this entry, and its treatment is characteristically spare: a single-line gloss ("Line"), the illustrative phrase from the Grand Coutumier de Normandie distinguishing collateral from direct line, and citations to Blackstone's Law Tracts, Britton, and Kelham. This is consistent with Burrill's general method for Law French terms — he preserves the source phrase rather than paraphrasing doctrine.
The phrase la ligne collatérale, et non pas la ligne droicte from Grand Coutumier ch. 25 is a substantive rule of Norman inheritance, not merely a definitional gloss. It establishes that collateral succession yields to direct-line succession — a foundational principle of the Norman scheme. Burrill's citation to Blackstone's Law Tracts (not the Commentaries) places this in the context of Blackstone's scholarly engagement with Norman sources rather than his more familiar doctrinal writing.
No other standard historical law dictionaries (Jacob, Tomlin, Black's early editions) carry a dedicated entry for ligne, reflecting its status as a term that fell out of active legal use well before those dictionaries were compiled. Kelham's glossary of Norman-French terms is the most directly relevant reference work in the Law Mind corpus for this vocabulary.
Jurisdictional Note
In civil law jurisdictions retaining French legal heritage — particularly Quebec and Louisiana — ligne or its equivalents remain conceptually active in succession law, governing the classification of heirs by direct or collateral relationship. Researchers should not assume that doctrine derived from Norman customary use maps cleanly onto modern civil law usage; the shared vocabulary masks significant doctrinal development over several centuries.