Definition
In old law, a child born of a lawful wife; a legitimate child. The term is the Law French form of the Latin *mulier* (in its legal sense) and designates the status of being born in wedlock, as distinguished from bastardy. It appears most often in contrast with *bastard* — particularly in disputes over inheritance where the legitimacy of competing heirs was at issue.
Common Confusion
The term carries a linguistic trap: *mulier* in classical Latin means "woman" or "wife," but in medieval English legal usage — both in the Latin form and the Law French form *muillere* — it was repurposed to mean a legitimate child, often specifically a legitimate son. A researcher encountering *mulier* or *muillere* in a feudal inheritance record should not read it as a reference to a female party. The word describes the child's legal status, not sex.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in medieval and early common law materials dealing with inheritance, bastardy, and the status of children born before or after the marriage of their parents. The distinction between a *muillere* (legitimate heir) and a *bastard eigne* (elder bastard, born before the parents married) was legally significant: under early common law, if the parents subsequently married, the bastard eigne who had already entered into seisin of land could, in some circumstances, hold it against the younger legitimate heir — a doctrine that generated considerable litigation in the feudal period.
Researchers working in Year Books, early plea rolls, or Bracton-era materials will encounter both the Latin *mulier* and the Law French *muillere* in this technical sense. Neither Westlaw nor modern legal databases index the term consistently, so full-text searches require spelling variants: *mulier*, *muillere*, *molliere*, and related forms. The term drops out of common legal usage after the medieval period; by the time of Blackstone it is treated as a historical curiosity rather than an operative word.
The phrase *frere muillere et frere bastard* (legitimate brother and bastard brother), cited in Britton, captures exactly the context in which the term functions: identifying the status of competing siblings in a succession dispute. Researchers encountering this phrase in early French-language legal sources should locate the surrounding procedural context to determine which heir prevailed and on what grounds.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary defines *muillere* as "[t]he son of a lawful wife; a mulier," cross-referencing the Latin form and citing Britton, chapter 70. This is consistent with standard medieval usage. Burrill correctly identifies the Law French origin and connects it to the Latin *mulier* in its legal — not its grammatical — sense.
What Burrill does not address is the full doctrinal context: the interplay between *bastard eigne* and *mulier puisne* (the younger legitimate heir), which was a developed area of medieval property law. That gap is significant for researchers; the term cannot be fully understood without its opposing concept. Britton and Bracton together provide the richer framework that dictionary entries alone cannot supply.
No entry appears in Bouvier, Black's, or other standard American legal dictionaries, which reflects the term's obsolescence in post-medieval practice.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is specific to the medieval English common law tradition and its Law French textual inheritance. It has no operative modern equivalent in any jurisdiction. Researchers will encounter it only in historical English sources and their scholarly commentaries.