Definition
In old Scots law, a pledge or security given for the performance of an obligation. The term is the Scots vernacular equivalent of the Latin *vadium*, the broader medieval legal concept encompassing the giving of property or persons as surety for a debt, duty, or obligation. Where vadium was the learned, Latinate term used in formal legal instruments and treatises, wedde was its functional counterpart in Scots legal usage and vernacular records.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of pure historical and archival significance. Researchers will encounter wedde primarily in early Scots legal records, charters, and instruments predating the systematic Latinization or later Anglicization of Scots legal vocabulary. Its practical importance is navigational: a researcher reading old Scots texts who fails to recognize wedde as a pledge or security instrument may misread the nature of a transaction entirely.
The critical research connection is the Latin term vadium. Burrill's entry cross-references Skene's *De Verborum Significatione* — Sir John Skene's 1597 glossary of Scots legal terms — which is the foundational source for this and many similarly obscure Scots law terms. Researchers working in pre-union Scots records who encounter wedde should immediately pivot to the vadium family of entries, which covers the full doctrinal content: the distinction between *vadium vivum* (living pledge, where income from the pledged property redeems the debt) and *vadium mortuum* (dead pledge — the origin of the word "mortgage"), the rights of the pledgee, and the conditions for redemption or forfeiture.
Because wedde itself is purely a label — Burrill provides no independent doctrinal content for it beyond the cross-reference to vadium — researchers should treat it as an access point into the richer vadium literature rather than a freestanding legal concept. Do not expect substantive treatment of wedde in legal dictionaries beyond the identification and redirect.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole entry in the Law Mind corpus for wedde, and the entry is deliberately thin: it identifies the term as old Scots law, translates it as "pledge," and refers the reader to Skene's *De Verborum Significatione* under the heading *Vadium*. This is precisely the treatment one would expect for a vernacular Scots term whose doctrinal weight was carried entirely by its Latin equivalent.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide — and what researchers should not expect to find — is any account of wedde as a distinct legal institution with its own rules. The term describes a practice, not a doctrine. The doctrine lives under vadium, and the historical dictionaries (Burrill, Tomlin, Jacob, Cunningham) handle vadium extensively. Researchers who locate wedde in a primary source and need to understand its legal operation must follow the chain: wedde → vadium → the sub-categories of vivum and mortuum → the Scots and English common law of pledge and mortgage.
Skene's *De Verborum Significatione* (1597, appended to his edition of the Scots Acts of Parliament) is the authoritative primary glossary for terms of this kind and is the source Burrill himself cites. It remains an essential reference for researchers in early modern Scots law.
Jurisdictional Note
Wedde is specific to old Scots law and will not appear in English, Irish, or colonial American legal records. Post-union Scots legal practice absorbed such terms into the broader Latinized or Anglicized vocabulary. The term has no living legal significance in any current jurisdiction.