Definition
An archaic Latin and Anglo-French spelling variant of "mayor" — the chief magistrate or presiding officer of a municipal corporation or borough. In medieval and early modern English legal records, *maior* was the standard written form before the anglicized spelling "mayor" became dominant. The term carries no independent legal meaning beyond its identity as a spelling variant; its significance is purely orthographic and historical.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval or early modern English legal records — particularly plea rolls, exchequer memoranda, borough charters, and municipal records from roughly the 12th through 16th centuries — will encounter *maior* where a modern source would write "mayor." Failure to recognize the equivalence can cause a researcher to miss or misclassify references to municipal officers in keyword or index searches.
The term is a reliable marker of document age. When *maior* appears in a source, it signals either a medieval original or a transcription that preserves the archaic spelling, which has implications for dating, provenance assessment, and the interpretive weight to assign the document. Burrill's citation to a Memorandum in Scaccario (Exchequer memorandum) from the reign of Edward I (Hilary term, 22 Edward I, c. 1294) is a useful anchor: it confirms the form was in active legal use in late 13th-century English royal administration.
Corpus researchers should note that digitized legal record databases may index entries inconsistently — some under "mayor," some under "maior," and some under both. Cross-searching both spellings is essential when working in primary sources from the medieval period.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree completely: *maior* is simply an old form of "mayor," with no contested meaning and no alternative definition offered. Burrill adds marginal value by supplying a specific source citation (the Exchequer memorandum of Edward I's reign), grounding the term in an identifiable class of document rather than leaving it as a floating orthographic note. Black's first and second editions are functionally identical entries, reflecting the term's simplicity.
No source offers substantive legal analysis, which is appropriate — *maior* is a form variant, not a distinct legal concept. The historical dictionaries do not discuss the office of mayor itself under this spelling, directing the researcher instead to that primary entry.