Definition
A Latin place-name appearing in old English legal records. Sarum is the Latinized form of Salisbury, a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England. In historical legal documents, deeds, writs, and ecclesiastical instruments, Sarum denotes the city of Salisbury and, by extension, the diocese and see centered there. The term appears most frequently in records predating or contemporaneous with the period when Latin was the standard language of legal and ecclesiastical documentation in England.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Salisbury, England; also the Latin liturgical rite developed at Salisbury Cathedral from the late eleventh century until the English Reformation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; Sarum appeared primarily as a learned or ecclesiastical reference to Salisbury.
The legal meaning of Sarum is narrower than its broader cultural use. Outside legal records, the term is perhaps best known in connection with the Use of Sarum — the liturgical rite of Salisbury Cathedral that became the dominant pre-Reformation rite across much of England, Wales, and Ireland. Legal researchers encountering Sarum in old records should not assume a liturgical or ecclesiastical context; in deeds, pleadings, and administrative instruments, it almost always functions simply as the place-name for Salisbury.
Why It Matters in Research
Sarum is an indexing and transcription trap. Researchers working with medieval and early modern English legal records — land conveyances, episcopal registers, royal writs, and judicial records from the Wiltshire circuit — will encounter Sarum as the standard Latin designation for Salisbury. Failure to recognize the equivalence can cause a researcher to overlook documents from or concerning Salisbury when searching by place-name, or to misidentify the issuing authority or venue.
Old Sarum presents a distinct and important complication. Old Sarum was the original hilltop settlement near modern Salisbury, distinct from the later city (New Sarum) established in the valley. In legal and parliamentary records, Old Sarum was a notorious rotten borough returning two members of Parliament until the Reform Act 1832. A researcher encountering "Old Sarum" in parliamentary, electoral, or constitutional history materials is in entirely different territory from one encountering plain "Sarum" in a conveyance or episcopal record. The distinction between Old Sarum (parliamentary borough) and New Sarum (the city of Salisbury, also called Sarum) matters and is not always made explicit in the records themselves.
Ecclesiastical records add a further layer. The Bishop of Salisbury historically styled himself using the Latin form, and instruments from that see will carry Sarum in the signatory or dating clauses. Researchers in ecclesiastical law, probate records proved in the diocese, or tithe disputes should expect Sarum to appear as part of the episcopal signature or jurisdictional heading.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries are in complete agreement: Sarum is simply the Latin name for Salisbury in England, and all three cite Spelman as authority — a reference to Henry Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum, the standard early modern glossary of Latin terms found in English legal and historical records. The entries are brief and consistent, which reflects the term's uncomplicated function as a place-name rather than a term of legal art. None of the historical dictionaries addresses the Old Sarum/New Sarum distinction or the liturgical use, which are outside the strict scope of legal dictionary treatment but are practically significant for researchers working across record types.
Jurisdictional Note
Sarum as a legal place-name is specific to English records. It has no application in American, Scottish, or Irish legal traditions as a term of art, though it may appear incidentally in colonial-era documents with English ecclesiastical or administrative connections.