Definition
A Latin term of medieval English law with two closely related but contextually distinct senses:
1. Open waste or common land. Land lying open to the cattle of all tenants who hold rights of common — that is, unenclosed ground available for shared grazing by those with recognized commoning rights.
2. Waste in the legal sense. Destruction or deterioration of land, nearly synonymous in old usage with destructio. The Statute of Marlborough (1267) used vastum in this sense, distinguishing it from exilium (removal of property from land) while treating vastum and destructio as essentially convertible terms: waste is destruction, and destruction is waste.
A third compound form appears in old forest records: vastum forestae vel bosci — the waste of a forest or wood, meaning that portion of a forest so stripped of trees and underwood as to be rendered open and barren.
Common Confusion
The two senses of vastum — open common land and injurious waste — point in opposite directions and can mislead a researcher encountering the term without context. In the first sense, vastum describes a condition of openness that is legally recognized and useful: tenants have rights there. In the second sense, vastum describes unlawful or harmful depletion. The distinction turns on context: vastum paired with rights of common signals the first sense; vastum paired with exilium or destructio in pleading or statutory language signals the second. Burrill records both senses explicitly, and confusion between them in historical documents is not uncommon.
Why It Matters in Research
Vastum is a term researchers are most likely to encounter in three contexts: manorial records, forest surveys, and early common law pleading on waste. Each context carries different interpretive weight.
In manorial and estate records, vastum typically identifies open land subject to commoning rights — the physical substrate for disputes over common pasture, enclosure, and the rights of copyholders or freeholders. Researchers tracing the history of a particular parcel or common may find vastum used as a descriptive label in surveys and extents, roughly synonymous with waste ground as understood in the law of commons.
In forest administration, vastum forestae vel bosci appears in records documenting the condition of crown or private forest land. The second edition of Black's cites Parochial Antiquities for this usage. These records were generated by forest courts and surveys and are distinct from ordinary manorial documentation — a researcher should not assume the same administrative provenance.
In pleading, particularly under the Statute of Marlborough and subsequent waste doctrine, vastum appears as a term of art distinguishing types of harm to land held by tenants. Burrill's partial quotation from the Statute signals that medieval common law drew careful lines between vastum (waste/destruction) and exilium (stripping away goods or profits). This distinction mattered in determining the appropriate remedy and the scope of liability under writs of waste.
The term drops out of practical legal usage well before the modern period. Researchers should not expect to find it in post-seventeenth-century sources except as antiquarian reference. Its appearance in a document is itself a dating signal.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core definition: vastum denotes open waste or common land accessible to tenants with commoning rights, with attribution to Cowell's Interpreter. Black's first and second editions are essentially identical on this point.
Burrill's entry is the most substantive. It preserves the second sense — waste as destruction — and quotes directly from the Statute of Marlborough to show that the medieval understanding treated vastum and destructio as interchangeable while separating both from exilium. This is genuinely useful information that Black's omits entirely.
The second edition of Black's adds the compound term vastum forestae vel bosci, which the first edition lacks, and cites Parochial Antiquities for the specific definition of deforested waste. This addition meaningfully extends the term's utility for forest history research.
None of the source dictionaries situate vastum within the broader common law of waste or connect it to the development of the action on the case or the writ of waste. Researchers needing that context must look beyond the dictionary sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Vastum is a term of English law with no independent development in American jurisdictions. It appears in American legal dictionaries only as a historical and etymological reference. Researchers working in American property law will encounter the underlying concepts — waste doctrine, rights of common — under entirely different terminology.