Definition
A Law French term meaning to suffer, to permit, or to forbear. In medieval legal usage, "to suffer" carried a technical sense of allowing something to occur without active resistance or objection — a passive acquiescence rather than affirmative consent. To soeffre was to stand by and permit an act, condition, or consequence to proceed.
The term is closely associated with the broader vocabulary of Law French procedural and property law, where the distinction between actively granting permission and passively tolerating a state of affairs could carry legal consequences, particularly in questions of prescription, waiver, and the rights of landlords, lords, or parties to allow encroachments or conditions to continue.
Why It Matters in Research
Soeffre is encountered almost exclusively in medieval English legal texts, Year Books, and early pleading records composed in Law French. Researchers working in those materials should recognize it as a term of acquiescence or forbearance, not active authorization. The distinction matters: a party who soeffre an act may not be held to have licensed or ratified it in the full legal sense, but passive sufferance could nonetheless trigger consequences in prescription or estoppel-adjacent doctrines of the period.
Because the term appears in Law French sources predating systematic common law reporting, researchers will find it in Kelham's Law French dictionary (the authority cited by Burrill) and in the Year Books rather than in later English digests or American sources. It does not survive into modern legal usage. When transcribing or reading early pleadings, the term may appear in variant spellings reflecting the instability of Law French orthography.
Note also that Burrill's entry runs directly into adjacent headwords — SOEN and SOER — suggesting these terms appear in close proximity in source texts. A researcher encountering any of these terms in a manuscript should check surrounding context carefully, as scribal compression and abbreviation were common.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary law dictionary source available for this term, and his entry is minimal: a three-word gloss ("to suffer; to permit; to forbear") attributed to Kelham. This is characteristic of Law French vocabulary entries across the historical dictionaries — the terms were already archaic by the time systematic legal lexicography began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and compilers largely deferred to Kelham's 1779 glossary of Law French without independent elaboration.
The brevity of the entry reflects the term's status as working procedural vocabulary rather than a doctrine or concept warranting extended treatment. Burrill does not provide a case example or contextual usage, which limits the entry's utility for researchers needing to interpret the term in a specific textual setting. Kelham's original glossary remains the deeper source for Law French terms of this class.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to the Law French legal tradition of medieval England. It has no counterpart in American, Scottish, or civil law sources, and does not appear in modern common law jurisdictions.