_P._ What is the meaning of the word felony? Does it signify anything that is in its own nature a crime, or that only which is made a crime by some statute? For I remember some statutes that make it felony to transport horses, and some other things, out of the kingdom; which transportation, before such statutes were made, and after the repealing of the same, was no greater crime than any other usual traffic of a merchant. _L._ Sir Edward Coke derives the word felony from the Latin word _fel_, the gall of a living creature; and accordingly defines felony to be an act done _animo felleo_; that is to say, a bitter, a cruel act. _P._ Etymologies are no definitions, and yet when they are true, they give much light towards the finding out of a definition. But this of Sir Edward Coke’s carries with it very little of probability; for there be many things made felony by the statute law, that proceed not from any bitterness of mind at all, and many that proceed from the contrary. _L._ This is matter for a critic, to be picked out of the knowledge of history and foreign languages, and you may perhaps know more of it than I do. _P._ All that I, or I think any other, can say in this matter, will amount to no more than a reasonable conjecture, insufficient to sustain any point of controversy in law. The word is not to be found in any of the old Saxon laws, set forth by Mr. Lambard, nor in any statute printed before that of Magna Charta; there it is found. Now Magna Charta was made in the time of Henry III, grandchild to Henry II, Duke of Anjou, a Frenchman born, and bred in the heart of France, whose language might very well retain many words of his ancestors the German Franks, as ours doth of the German Saxons; as also many words of the language of the Gauls, as the Gauls did retain many words of the Greek colony planted at Marseilles. But certain it is, the French lawyers at this day use the word felon, just as our lawyers use the same; whereas the common people of France use the word _filou_ in the same sense. But _filou_ signifieth, not the man that hath committed such an act as they call felony, but the man that maketh it his trade to maintain himself by the breaking and contemning of all laws generally; and comprehendeth all those unruly people called cheaters, cutpurses, picklocks, catchcloaks, coiners of false money, forgers, thieves, robbers, murderers, and whosoever make use of iniquity on land or sea as a trade or living. The Greeks upon the coast of Asia, where Homer lived, were they that planted the colony of Marseilles. They had a word that signified the same with felon, which was φιλήτης, _filetes_; and this _filetes_ of Homer signifies properly the same that a felon signifies with us. And therefore Homer makes Apollo to call Mercury φιλήτην, _fileteen_, and ἄρχον φιλήτων. I insist not upon the truth of this etymology, but it is certainly more rational than the _animus felleus_ of Sir Edward Coke.