Definition
A family or household. In old English law, *meigne* (also rendered *maisnader*) referred to the members of a household collectively — those living under one roof and under the authority of a head of household. The term appears in medieval English legal records, particularly in contexts involving the household's legal identity, obligations, or collective presence on a manor or estate.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term in early English legal records, manorial rolls, or medieval pleadings should recognize it as a household or family unit descriptor, not a reference to any formal legal relationship in the modern sense. The term belongs to the vocabulary of Anglo-Norman and early Middle English legal writing, reflecting a period when law was recorded in a mixture of Latin, Anglo-Norman French, and early English. Variant spellings are common in primary sources — *meigne*, *maisnader*, *meine*, *meiny*, and *meyné* may all appear depending on the scribe and period, and none of these variants will be indexed consistently across manuscript collections or early printed legal records. Failure to account for spelling variation is the primary research trap with this term.
The word carries no surviving doctrinal weight in modern common law. It does not appear in contemporary statutes, rules, or case law. Its value to a researcher is almost entirely paleographic and historical: identifying it correctly prevents misreading a passage and allows the researcher to understand the social and legal unit being described in the source document.
This term connects naturally to broader research on the medieval household as a legal concept, including questions of villeinage, serfdom, and manorial obligation, where the composition and status of a household (or *meigne*) could affect legal rights and duties. Researchers working in those areas should treat *meigne* as context vocabulary rather than a term of art with discrete legal consequences.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary records the entry concisely: *"Meigne, or Maisnader. In old English law. A family."* This entry is notably spare — characteristic of Black's treatment of archaic Anglo-Norman terms that survived only in historical legal records rather than living doctrine. No elaboration on legal consequences, context, or associated rights is provided, which itself signals that the term had no technical doctrinal content even by the time Black's first editions were compiled.
Historical legal dictionaries in this era frequently preserved such terms as glossary entries for lawyers reading old precedents and Year Books rather than as active legal vocabulary. The pairing of *meigne* and *maisnader* as co-entries suggests Black's recognized both forms as circulating in the sources, though *meigne* appears to be the more common form in surviving texts. No substantive divergence exists across historical dictionary sources because the term appears in too few of them to generate competing treatments.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to the English legal tradition and has no recognized counterpart in American law. It would appear only in sources predating or immediately following the Norman period of English legal history, and researchers are unlikely to encounter it outside that historical context.