Definition
An archaic Law French term denoting suretyship — the legal relationship in which one person (the surety) undertakes responsibility for the obligation or appearance of another. The term is closely associated with plegiagium, its Latin counterpart, and appears in early English legal records and Year Books in contexts involving bail, mainprise, and the pledging of persons or property as security for a legal obligation.
Common Confusion
PLEGGAGE vs. PLEDGE: These terms share a common etymological root and are often used interchangeably in historical sources, but they are not identical in technical legal usage. Pledge, in its developed common-law form, refers specifically to the delivery of personal property as security for a debt or obligation. Pleggage, by contrast, refers to the relation of suretyship itself — the undertaking of personal responsibility for another — not necessarily involving the transfer of any property. Researchers encountering pleggage in medieval or early modern records should resist reading it through the lens of the modern chattel pledge.
PLEGGAGE vs. MAINPRISE: Both terms arise in the context of securing a person's appearance or performance, and both are loosely grouped under the heading of suretyship. Mainprise (manucaptio) carried the specific technical meaning of a surety who took physical custody of another into their hands, whereas pleggage denotes the suretyship relation more broadly. The two appear in overlapping but not interchangeable contexts in the Year Books and early treatises.
Why It Matters in Research
Pleggage is a navigational term — a signpost, not a destination. Researchers encountering it in Burrill or in primary sources are being directed to the broader doctrine of suretyship and to the Latin form plegiagium, which appears far more frequently in medieval Latin legal records, plea rolls, and formularies. The Law French form pleggage is most likely to surface in early Year Book material, abridgments drawing on French sources, or glossaries compiled during the transitional period when legal French was giving way to English in professional writing.
The truncated Burrill entry ("Plee en —") suggests the term appeared in a longer Law French phrase, possibly plee en pleggagé or a similar construction, which would have denoted a plea or proceeding connected with a suretyship obligation. Researchers working in medieval English court records should search for both the Law French and Latin variants and should consult glossaries of Law French such as Kelham's Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language (1779), which Burrill himself cites here. Kelham remains one of the few specialized resources for this vocabulary.
Because pleggage represents an early layer of suretyship doctrine — before the common law fully elaborated the distinctions among bail, recognizance, mainprise, and pledging of goods — its appearance in a document can help date or situate that document within the development of English security law. It is not a term that carries forward into modern practice or modern statutory language.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is minimal: he defines pleggage as Law French for suretyship, cites Kelham, and cross-references plegiagium. The entry trails off with the fragment "Plee en —," indicating either that the original source text was truncated or that Burrill was flagging a phrase he intended to address elsewhere. No definition of the full phrase is supplied, which is a gap researchers should note.
No entry for pleggage appears in Jacob's Law Dictionary, Tomlin's Law Dictionary, or Bouvier's Law Dictionary — the other major historical shelf dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus. This absence confirms that pleggage was already an archaic specialist term by the time those works were compiled, useful mainly for decoding older primary sources rather than as a term of living legal art. The Burrill entry itself points researchers firmly toward plegiagium as the operative form for substantive research into the underlying doctrine.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Suretyship
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Pledge and Security
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Bail and Recognizance