Definition
A stirrup. In medieval English legal records, *slippa* denotes the physical stirrup used in mounting a horse, and the term appears principally in the context of serjeanty tenure — a form of land tenure in which a tenant held land in exchange for performing a specified personal service to the sovereign or a lord. The most-cited instance involves a tenure in Cambridgeshire held by the obligation of holding the sovereign's stirrup, a ceremonial act of assistance in mounting.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not recorded as a standard English word. The cognate "stirrup" refers to a loop or ring hung from a saddle to support a rider's foot.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Stirrup" is defined as a ring or bent piece of metal for receiving the foot of a rider. No entry for *slippa* appears in Webster's 1913, confirming it as a term confined to legal and record Latin.
*Slippa* is not an English word but a Latinate form used in old English records and charters. A researcher encountering it in a historical document should not read it as a corruption of any English term; it is technical record Latin meaning precisely what the physical object is — a stirrup — and its significance is entirely relational, pointing to the tenure obligation it defines.
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Why It Matters in Research
*Slippa* is a narrow term of art encountered almost exclusively in transcriptions of medieval English charters and custumals, and its research significance is essentially taxonomic: it identifies a specific type of serjeanty service. Researchers working with tenure records, Inquisitions Post Mortem, or county histories for Cambridgeshire may encounter the term and need to place it within the broader framework of serjeanty.
The key trap in historical sources is treating *slippa* as a substantive legal concept with doctrine attached, when it is more precisely a descriptive word embedded in a tenure formula. Its legal weight comes entirely from the serjeanty relationship it defines, not from any independent legal meaning. No body of case law developed around the word itself.
Because serjeanty tenures were largely abolished or converted by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 in England, *slippa* as a living term of legal consequence had no post-medieval survival. Researchers should expect to find it only in primary records predating or contemporaneous with that abolition, in antiquarian compilations drawing on those records, and in legal dictionaries that preserve it as a historical artifact.
Burrill's citation to "Cart. 5 Hen. VII." refers to cartulary records from the reign of Henry VII (early sixteenth century), and his cross-reference to Cowell points to John Cowell's *The Interpreter* (1607), an early English legal dictionary. Both are appropriate places for further verification of the term in its original record context.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree completely: *slippa* means stirrup, and the defining example is the Cambridgeshire tenure by holding the sovereign's stirrup. There is no divergence among them on substance. Burrill adds the most procedural detail, identifying the term as "L. Lat." (Law Latin or record Latin) and citing a cartulary source from the reign of Henry VII alongside Cowell, which gives the term marginally more archival grounding than the other dictionaries provide.
What all four dictionaries omit is any discussion of serjeanty tenure as the legal framework that makes *slippa* meaningful. A researcher who knows only the dictionary entry — "a stirrup" — will understand the word but not why it appears in a legal record. The term is in these dictionaries because the tenure service it describes is a legal obligation, not because the object itself has legal significance.
None of the source dictionaries cross-reference related serjeanty services (such as tenure by *grand serjeanty* or *petty serjeanty*), which would be the natural conceptual neighbors.
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Jurisdictional Note
*Slippa* is a term specific to medieval English land law and has no recorded application in Scottish, Irish, or colonial American legal materials. It does not appear in civil law or canon law traditions. Research context is effectively limited to England, with particular association to Cambridgeshire records.
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