Definition
An Anglo-French adverb of medieval legal usage meaning privately, secretly, or not visibly. The term appears in early English legal texts to describe conduct or a condition carried out or existing without public knowledge or observation. It functions as a modifier in legal pleading and record language rather than as a substantive term in its own right.
The phrase most associated with privement in surviving legal literature is privement enceint — secretly pregnant — describing a woman whose pregnancy is not known or observable to others. This usage carried practical legal significance in contexts where pregnancy had procedural consequences, most notably the plea of the belly (a condemned woman's claim of pregnancy to delay execution).
Common Confusion
Privement should not be confused with terms like privily or privately as used in modern contract and property law, where those words carry specific technical meanings relating to privity of contract or estate. Privement is a purely archaic adverbial form; it does not establish or describe a legal relationship. Modern legal usage has entirely displaced it.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering privement in original records or transcriptions of early English legal materials — particularly Exchequer memoranda, plea rolls, and Year Books from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries — should treat it as a term of description rather than a term of art. It signals that the accompanying fact was alleged to be hidden or not publicly manifest, which could bear on proof requirements or procedural posture.
The phrase privement enceint is the operative context in which this term most often surfaces. The plea of the belly — a condemned woman's right to claim pregnancy and thereby delay or avoid execution — required a jury of matrons to examine the prisoner. Whether the pregnancy was privement enceint or grossement enceint (visibly, noticeably pregnant) affected both the plausibility of the plea and the conduct of the examination. Understanding privement in this context connects to a broader set of procedural and evidentiary questions about how pregnancy was proven or contested in early English criminal proceedings.
Researchers using Law Mind's historical corpus should note that this term appears almost exclusively in Law French and early Latin-inflected legal records. It will not appear in modern statutory compilations or common law digests post-seventeenth century. When it does appear in later secondary sources, it is invariably as a gloss on or quotation from earlier materials.
The Mem. in Scacc. reference in Burrill — Memoranda in Scaccario, 18 Edward I (1289–1290) — points to Exchequer records from the reign of Edward I, placing the term's active legal use in the late thirteenth century. Finch's Law, lib. 2, c. 3, cited by Burrill for the privement enceint usage, is Henry Finch's Nomotechnia (1613, later translated and expanded as Law, or a Discourse Thereof), an early systematic treatment of English law that preserved and explained Law French terminology for a contemporary audience.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term. Burrill treats it concisely and accurately: an adverb of concealment, defined by contrast with aperment (openly), and illustrated by the privement enceint usage drawn from Finch. No modern legal dictionary treats privement as an active term; its survival in the lexicographic record is entirely due to historical dictionaries preserving Law French vocabulary.
Burrill's cross-reference to Grossement is important: grossement enceint (visibly or greatly pregnant) is the contrasting condition, describing a pregnancy observable without examination. The legal distinction between the two degrees of apparent pregnancy had procedural weight in the plea of the belly. Researchers should consult the Grossement entry in Burrill for the complementary half of this pairing.
No major English legal dictionary produced after the nineteenth century retains privement as an entry, which reflects the complete obsolescence of Law French as a medium of English legal record-keeping following its statutory abolition in 1731.
Jurisdictional Note
Privement is exclusively a term of early English law and appears only in the Anglo-French legal tradition that preceded modern common law. It has no counterpart in civil law systems and was never transplanted into American, Canadian, or other common law jurisdictions as a working term. Its relevance today is purely historical and paleographic.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Pleading and Proof (on the role of observable facts in early English procedure)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Women in Early English Law (on the plea of the belly and privement enceint)