Definition
(Law Latin; also spelled Redubbers) In old English law, persons who purchased stolen cloth or clothing and altered it — by changing its color, cut, or form — so that the original goods could not be identified or recovered. The transformation was the offense: a mantle might be remade into a coat or overcoat, destroying the evidentiary trail back to the theft. Redobatores were thus accessories after the fact to theft, distinguished from the original thief by their role in concealing the stolen property through physical transformation rather than mere possession or resale.
Common Confusion
Redobatores should not be confused with simple receivers of stolen goods. The defining feature of a redobator was active alteration — the deliberate disguising of stolen property through physical reworking. A person who merely purchased and held stolen cloth without altering it would fall under a different category of liability. The distinction mattered practically because the transformation of the goods frustrated the owner's ability to identify and reclaim them, compounding the original wrong.
Why It Matters in Research
This is an archaic term of art appearing almost exclusively in sources treating medieval English statutory law. Researchers will encounter it only in historical legal texts, glossaries of Law Latin, and commentaries on early English legislation — particularly materials touching the Statute of Wales (12 Edward I). Its modern relevance is taxonomic rather than practical: the term illuminates the medieval common law's approach to accessory liability and the handling of stolen property, concepts that evolved substantially into modern receiving-stolen-goods and theft-by-concealment doctrines.
Researchers tracing the lineage of receiving stolen property offenses, or studying the reach of Edwardian legislation into Wales and the English borderlands, may encounter this term as a label for a specific subcategory of conduct. Do not expect cross-references in modern statutory compilations or case law — the term drops out of active legal usage well before the modern era. Its presence in a source is itself a dating signal: texts using redobatores without explanation are almost certainly drawing from medieval or early modern antecedents.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four historical dictionary sources are in close agreement on substance, differing only in the degree of detail each supplies. Black's (both first and second editions) gives the core definition tersely: buyers of stolen cloth who alter its color or form to prevent recognition, with redubbers noted as the English equivalent. Rapalje & Lawrence treats the term as a pure cross-reference to redubbers without independent elaboration.
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the most useful source here. It supplies the Law Latin classification, specifies the statutory basis (Stat. Walliæ, 12 Edw. I), offers a concrete example of the transformation (de mantello tunicam vel supertunicam facientibus — making out of a mantle a coat or overcoat), and cites Barrington's Observations on the Statutes. This specificity makes Burrill the preferred starting point for any researcher needing to locate the term in its original legislative context. No source among the four identifies any judicial elaboration of the term, which is consistent with it being primarily a statutory rather than common-law category.
None of the historical dictionaries address how redobatores liability related to or competed with broader receiving-of-stolen-goods doctrine as it developed in subsequent centuries — a gap researchers should bear in mind when attempting to trace doctrinal continuity.
Jurisdictional Note
The term originates in the Statute of Wales (12 Edward I, 1284), a foundational instrument imposing English law on Wales. Its jurisdictional context is therefore specifically Anglo-Welsh and medieval. Modern receiving-stolen-goods and concealment-of-stolen-property statutes across common law jurisdictions are the functional descendants of this category of liability, though no modern jurisdiction uses this terminology.