1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Purlieu

PURLIEU, a word used of the outlying parts of a place or district, sometimes in a derogatory sense. It was a term of the old English forest law (q.v.), and meant, as defined by Manwood (Treatise of the Forest Laws), “a certain territory of ground adjoining unto the forest,. . .which. . .was once forest-land and afterwards disafforested by the perambulations made for the severing of the new forests from the old.” The owner of free-lands in the purlieu to the yearly value of forty shillings was known as a “purlieu-man” or “purley-man.” There seems no doubt that “purlieu” or “purley” represents the Anglo-French puralé, puralee (O. Fr. pouraler, puraler, to go through, Lat. perambulate), a legal term meaning properly a perambulation to determine the boundaries of a manor, parish, &c.