Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "to grind." Used in early English legal records and Year Books to describe the act of grinding grain, typically in the context of mill-related obligations, feudal services, and the rights of lords over their tenants' grain-milling activities.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering MOULDRE in medieval English legal records will find it exclusively in Law French and Latin-inflected sources predating the displacement of Law French from English legal practice. The term appears in Year Book contexts — particularly records from the reign of Edward III — where disputes over milling rights, soke obligations, and suit of mill were litigated. A researcher tracing the history of milling tenure, feudal service obligations, or the rights and duties attached to manorial mills should recognize MOULDRE as the operative verb in those proceedings.
The term is closely connected to the feudal institution of suit of mill (secta ad molendinum), under which tenants were obligated to bring their grain to the lord's mill for grinding and to pay a toll for the service. Disputes captured in the Year Books using MOULDRE often turn on whether a tenant performed or was excused from this obligation. Modern researchers using digitized Year Book collections should search variant spellings, as scribal inconsistency in Law French is common and the term may appear in contracted or variant form.
MOULDRE should not be confused with its near-neighbor entry MOULT (also MOLT, MULT), which Burrill records separately as a Law French adjective meaning "many" or "much" — derived from the Latin multus. The phonetic proximity of these terms in manuscript sources could create misreadings, particularly for researchers working from unedited transcriptions or early print editions of the Year Books.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term. Burrill defines MOULDRE concisely as "to grind" and cites the Year Books at Michaelmas Term, 4 Edward III, folio 71, as authority — one of the earliest printed Year Book sources and a reliable anchor for the term in formal legal usage. Burrill also records the adjacent entry MOULT/MOLT/MULT with its plural variants (mults, moldes, mous), noting Kelham's Law French dictionary as authority, which underscores that both terms were current in the Law French legal vocabulary of the period.
No later English legal dictionaries — Bouvier, Black, or the cyclopedic works of the nineteenth century — carry MOULDRE as a live entry, which reflects the complete obsolescence of the term following the decline of Law French. Its survival in Burrill is attributable to Burrill's deliberate project of recovering archaic and foreign-language legal vocabulary for the benefit of practitioners and scholars working with early English records. Researchers should not expect to find MOULDRE in American legal sources under any circumstances; the term is entirely a creature of medieval English feudal and manorial law.
Jurisdictional Note
MOULDRE is exclusively a term of early English law. It has no application in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions and appears only in medieval English Year Books and related records predating the abolition of Law French in legal proceedings.