Definition
A category of land tenure in medieval English feudal administration, recorded in Domesday Book. Reveland was originally thane-land — land held by a thane (a nobleman) for the term of his life by grant from the king. Upon the thane's death, rather than being regranted to a new holder, the land reverted to the crown and was placed under the direct administrative management of the reve (a royal bailiff or estate manager) of the manor. The land was thus not held by a subject in any recognized tenure but instead rested in charge upon the crown's own administrative account, managed by the reve on the king's behalf.
Common Language
The word has no modern common usage. "Reve" (or "reeve") survives in historical English as a term for a local official or overseer, and the compound "reveland" is transparently land administered by such an officer. The term has no entry in Wiktionary and no living legal or colloquial application. Researchers encountering it outside of Domesday scholarship or Anglo-Norman feudal law should treat it as a purely archival term.
Common Confusion
Reveland has been confused with socage tenure. Bouvier's expressly notes that Sir Edward Coke incorrectly classified reveland as land held in socage. Socage was a defined feudal tenure involving a tenant who held land in exchange for fixed non-military services. Reveland, by contrast, involved no tenant at all — the land sat in administrative limbo under the crown's direct management, outside the tenure system entirely. This error in Coke is significant because Coke's authority carried enormous weight in later common law development; any secondary source relying on Coke for this classification should be treated with caution.
Why It Matters in Research
Reveland is an archival and historical term with no operative legal meaning in any modern jurisdiction. Its research relevance is confined to three contexts:
First, Domesday Book scholarship and medieval land history. Researchers tracing English land title, manorial records, or the feudal origins of crown land grants may encounter the term in primary sources and need to understand its administrative significance — specifically, that reveland represented land outside the normal tenure hierarchy, managed rather than granted.
Second, the Coke error is a useful illustration of the hazards of relying on early commentators for Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman land concepts. Coke's influence was so pervasive that misclassifications in his work propagated through centuries of legal writing. Any secondary source from the 17th through 19th centuries characterizing reveland or its relationship to socage should be checked against Spelmannus (Spelman's Feuds) or the Domesday text directly.
Third, corpus connections to adjacent terms. Reveland does not stand alone in the historical dictionaries — Rapalje & Lawrence segue directly from reveland to REVENUE in a single entry block, reflecting the thematic proximity of crown land management and fiscal administration. Researchers working on the history of royal revenue, exchequer jurisdiction, or the fiscal prerogatives of the crown may find reveland cited as context for how ungranted crown lands generated income through administrative rather than tenurial mechanisms.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core account: reveland is former thane-land that reverted to the crown on the thane's death and was not regranted, but instead placed under the management of the reve or bailiff of the manor. All four trace the definition ultimately to Spelman's Feuds, chapter 24 (Spelm. Feuds, c. 24), making Spelman the controlling historical authority.
Black's 1st edition and Black's 2nd edition are largely in accord, though the 2nd edition adds context by noting the role of the sheriff in counties and mayor in boroughs (attributed to Wharton) — a passage that appears to be an editorial interpolation connecting the reve concept to later analogous officials, rather than a direct extension of the reveland definition itself.
Bouvier's is the most analytically precise of the four, explicitly flagging and correcting the Coke error on socage, which neither of the Black's editions foregrounds. Rapalje & Lawrence reproduces the standard definition without the Coke correction and without citing Bouvier's critique. Researchers should treat Bouvier's as the more reliable guide on this particular doctrinal point.
No source provides case law or statutory authority, which reflects the nature of the term: it is a descriptive category from an administrative survey (Domesday Book), not a term of art that generated litigation or legislation.
Jurisdictional Note
Reveland is exclusively an English historical concept, arising from Anglo-Norman feudal administration as recorded in Domesday Book (1086). It has no application in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. Modern English land law has entirely superseded the feudal tenure framework within which reveland had meaning.