Definition
An archaic Law French term with two related but distinct legal uses in early English law:
1. A formulaic phrase meaning "to be known" or "this is to wit," used in the opening or recitative clauses of old legal instruments and writs. In this sense, assaver (also rendered as ascavoir or c'est ascavoir) functioned as a term of introduction or notification — equivalent to the modern "namely" or "that is to say" — signaling that what followed was an explanation or enumeration of something previously stated. The phrase fet assaver meant "to make known" or "to give notice," and appeared in official contexts involving clerks of markets and similar officers acting under royal authority.
2. A trial or examination of certain commodities or materials. In this sense, assaver overlaps substantially with assaia (assay): it referred to the official testing of bread, cloth, and similar goods for conformity to legal standards, and to the testing of metals and coined money for purity. The officer or proceeding conducting such a test operated under regulatory frameworks governing markets and the quality of goods in trade.
The two meanings share a common conceptual thread — official verification and public notice — but arise in entirely different documentary contexts.
Common Confusion
Assaver, assaia, and assay are closely related and frequently treated as interchangeable in historical legal sources, but researchers should distinguish them carefully. Assaia and assay more consistently refer to the metallurgical or commodity-testing function, while assaver in its phrase form (si est assaver, fet assaver) is a drafting convention of writs and instruments, not a testing procedure. Conflating the notarial and regulatory senses will send researchers in the wrong direction when reading early enrolled writs or market regulations.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering assaver in manuscript sources or early printed legal compilations should first determine which sense is operative before pursuing related records. The phrase-marker sense (si est assaver, fet assaver) appears in writs issued through the Chancery and in instruments recorded on the close and patent rolls; it is a drafting artifact, not a substantive legal term, and its presence signals that explanatory or enumerating language follows. Researchers working with Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig.) and similar writ registers will encounter fet assaver in connection with the jurisdiction of clerks of markets, who were charged with enforcing the Assize of Bread and Ale and related commodity regulations.
The commodity-examination sense connects to a substantial body of medieval market regulation. Testing of bread, cloth, and coin was a royal prerogative function, administered locally through market courts and by officers whose authority derived from royal grant or statute. Records of assay proceedings appear in borough records, leet court rolls, and the records of the mint. The purity-testing function for metals and coin is the strand that survived most directly into modern English and American law as "assay" in its technical metallurgical sense.
A research trap: because assaver appears in both writ formularies and commodity-regulation contexts, a term search across a mixed corpus of early legal materials will return results from both documentary traditions. The formulaic appearances will outnumber the substantive ones and can obscure the regulatory record if not filtered.
The term does not appear in later common law dictionaries (Bouvier, Black) in any significant form, which itself tells a story: by the time American and modern English legal lexicography crystallized, assaver as a term of art had dissolved into its component functions. The writ-formula sense became invisible as Law French was abandoned; the testing sense survived entirely under assay.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal English-language legal dictionary source for this term and provides the fullest account available in the standard reference shelf. Burrill identifies both the formulaic and the commodity-testing senses, cross-references assaia, and cites Cowell, Blount, and Kelham — the expected authorities for archaic Law French and early English legal vocabulary. Cowell's Interpreter and Blount's Nomo-Lexicon both address the assay and market-examination functions in entries that treat the testing of bread, cloth, and metals as a unified regulatory category. Kelham's Norman-French Dictionary is the appropriate source for the phrase-marker uses, where assaver functions as legal French rather than as a substantive term.
None of these historical sources provide significant procedural detail about how assaver examinations were conducted in practice; for that, researchers must move from dictionary sources to the Assize of Bread, the statutes governing the mint, and borough custumals. The historical dictionaries agree in substance but vary in emphasis: Cowell and Blount foreground the commodity-testing sense, while Kelham foregrounds the linguistic and drafting sense.
Jurisdictional Note
Assaver is a term of English legal history with no independent American legal development. Its regulatory functions were absorbed into American law through general commercial and weights-and-measures frameworks, not through any direct reception of the term itself.