ppl. a. [f. FRANCHISE sb. and v. + -ED.]
† 1. Of a city, etc.: a. Possessing the right of sanctuary. b. Invested with municipal or political privileges. Obs.
a. 1503–4. Act 19 Hen. VII., c. 36, Preamb. Sir Edward kepith hym in such hidelles and other places fraunchesed.
1546. Langley, Pol. Verg. De Invent., III. viii. 74 b. Moses which was long before Hercules, did institute thre franchised tounes.
b. 1451. Paston Lett. (1872), I. 194. It was a fraunchised town and within the Duchye.
1538. Leland, Itin. (1711), V. 43. There hath beene a Franchisid Toune, now clene decayith.
1641. Termes de la Ley, 215. Seised of Lands in Gavelkind, as in Kent, and in other places franchised.
2. Of persons: Made ‘free’ of a body politic.
1520. in W. H. Turner, Select. Rec. Oxford, 26. If eny Fraunchesid man sworn unto the fraunches of the seide town be disobedient.
1558. Reg. Gild Corpus Chr. York (1872), 220, note. The mayour’s kid-cot, where unto franchised men are used to be commytted for their offens, was to rawe and cold an hows for hym.
1841. W. Spalding, Italy & It. Isl., II. 116. All of them agreed in holding the sovereign power within the city to be vested in the community, composed of all the franchised citizens.
† 3. Made free, enfranchised. Obs.
1650. Earl Monmouth, trans. Senault’s Man become Guilty, 257. Cicero studied the purity of language in Terence, and the grace of expressing it upon Roscius his Theater, but because the one was but a franchised slave, and the other a common Player, he onely reaped the glory of their labours.
1753. L. M., trans. Du Boscq’s Accomplish’d Woman, II. 114. For this vile purpose Nero judg’d none so proper as Anicetus [Note His (Nero’s) franchis’d slave], the same who had accomplish’d for him the murder of his mother.
