Definition
In early English legal usage, a parnour is a taker — one who takes or receives something. The term derives from the Law French parner (to take) and appears in medieval legal instruments and statutory texts. It functions as a noun designating the party who receives or takes a thing, typically in the context of rights, profits, or property passing from one party to another.
The term is archaic and appears almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources. It is not a term of art in modern practice.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering parnour in historical English legal texts should treat it as a functional descriptor of a receiving party, roughly analogous to a grantee, recipient, or taker depending on context. The specific context — whether the taking involves profits of land, fees, rents, or other property interests — will determine how the term maps onto modern legal categories.
The Burrill citation to Articuli super Cartas (Articles upon the Charters), chapter 2, anchors the term in the confirmatory legislation of Edward I's reign. That statute, issued in 1300 as a supplement to Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, regulated abuses by royal officers and others who wrongfully took goods, provisions, or profits from subjects. In that context, parnour carries a legal charge: it identifies the actor whose taking is being scrutinized or regulated. Researchers reading Articuli super Cartas in the original or in translation should watch for this term as identifying the party subject to the restriction, not a neutral transactional role.
Because the term appears in Law French, researchers using early printed editions of English statutes or Year Books may encounter variant spellings or anglicized forms. The root parner and its derivatives (parcener, coparcener) occupy overlapping semantic territory in Law French sources, which can create interpretive confusion when the precise nature of the taking — whether joint inheritance or a single receipt — is legally relevant.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary entry identified for this term. Burrill defines it simply as "a taker" and traces the derivation to parner, with the supporting citation to Articuli super Cartas chapter 2. The entry is minimal, consistent with Burrill's treatment of highly archaic Law French terms where contextual documentation is sparse.
No entry for parnour appears in Tomlin's Law Dictionary, Jacob's Law Dictionary, or Bouvier's Law Dictionary as consulted within the Law Mind corpus. This absence is itself informative: the term did not achieve sufficient circulation in common law practice to earn independent treatment in the major Anglophone legal dictionaries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It survives essentially as a textual artifact of a specific statutory context.
Burrill's cross-reference to parner invites attention to that root entry, where the taking sense is developed more fully. Researchers should consult parner in conjunction with this entry.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to the medieval English common law tradition and its Law French documentary heritage. It has no recognized counterpart or usage in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions as an operative legal term.