You’ve probably heard of the phrase “time immemorial” as a general term for events that happened a very long time ago, but in fact, it has a specific meaning, and this year is its 750th anniversary.
Let’s go back to the year 1275, and the recently crowned King Edward I is busy drafting and passing laws to tidy up his Kingdom. One of them was the Statute of Westminster, which covered a lot of matters relating to how legal processes should be carried out, oh and of course, new taxes.
However, for the purposes of this article, it’s also the document that introduced the concept of Time Immemorial.
Although often used as a general phrase for “a very long time ago”, it specifically refers to events that occurred before 3rd September 1189.
Anything before that date is time immemorial.
Explicitly why 3rd September 1189 was chosen as the barrier between that which we know and that which we don’t has itself been lost to time.
But a very good theory exists.
That date marks the coronation of King Richard (the Lionheart), the three-tims predecessor of King Edward I, and a good theory exists about why great-grand uncle was the point at which time immemorial began.
At the time, a legal policy allowed defendants to cite oral history passed down from their grandfather in disputes over land ownership. However, for the purposes of this situation, grandad could be dead, but so long as dad was still alive, and would swear that he heard it from his dad, that could stand up in court.
So if gramps told his son that the land was theirs, then that verbal statement could many many years later and long after gramps had died, still be accepted as valid evidence.
Which, when you think about it, is the sort of legal daftness that needed tidying up and replaced with formal document keeping about who owned what – and for the King, far more importantly, it cleaned up who owed him taxes on the land.
The theory is that when the Statute of Westminster was passed in 1275, it was just about possible for a person alive in that year to be able to cite oral history from their grandfather in a dispute.
But not great-granddad.
So, the Statute was designed to say that anything older than your granddad didn’t exist unless there was an official document proving it.
Oral history was no longer good enough.
This is a good enough reason to pass the law, and for the King to select the coronation of his great-granddad as the date this would come into effect.
Choosing a royal ancestor as the trigger for law probably also helped remind people of the current King’s lineage and right to rule, which was a useful trick in keeping the uppity Barons in check, especially considering they had been involved in the Second Barons’ War just a few years earlier.
Medieval historian Richard Barber describes this as “the watershed between a primarily oral culture and a world where writing was paramount”.
However, the Statute itself doesn’t call this principle “time immemorial”, and that was only created by the Prescription Act of 1832, which noted that the full expression was “time immemorial, or time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary”, replaced the burden of proving “time immemorial” for the enjoyment of particular land rights with statutory fixed time periods of up to 60 years.
So if you ever hear someone breezily stating that “it’s been like that since time immemorial”, you can pedantically point out that they mean prior to 3rd September 1189.
And all thanks to a law passed 750 years ago.
There is an English version of the original act here.