Definition
An obsolete Anglo-French legal term meaning "a breaker." Used in early English law to describe a person who broke or forcibly violated something under legal protection — most commonly the king's prison. The related noun form, brusure, denotes the act of breaking itself, as in brusure de pountz, the breaking of bridges.
The term appears in two principal uses in medieval English legal records:
1. BRUSOUR (person): A breaker; specifically, one who breaks the king's prison. The phrase de brussours de la prison le roy referred to those who broke out of, or broke into, royal custody — an offense against the crown's authority over detention.
2. BRUSURE (act): The act of breaking. Applied to physical destruction of structures under royal or communal protection, such as bridges. Bridge-breaking (brusure de pountz) was a cognizable offense in early English law because bridges were essential infrastructure under public obligation.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will not appear in modern legal materials. Researchers encounter it exclusively in medieval English legal texts, year books, and treatises drawing on Anglo-French (Law French) vocabulary — particularly Britton, the late thirteenth-century legal treatise attributed to John le Breton and written in the name of Edward I.
The key navigational point: brusour and brusure are not terms of art that evolved into modern equivalents under the same name. Their legal substance migrated into later doctrines — prison breach, escape, and the public duty to maintain bridges — but the terminology was entirely displaced as Law French gave way to English legal writing. A researcher tracing the history of prison escape offenses or bridge maintenance obligations in medieval English law should treat this term as a period marker, not a living concept.
Researchers using Britton as a primary source should note that chapter references (c. 29 for prison-breaking, c. 122 for bridge-breaking) provide the specific loci for these usages. Cross-referencing with Bracton and Fleta may surface related vocabulary in Latin, which ran parallel to Law French in the same period.
The distinction between the person (brusour) and the act (brusure) matters when reading close medieval pleading records. Confusing the two forms can produce misreadings of who is being charged and what conduct is alleged.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole source in the Law Mind corpus for this term, and its entry is brief but structurally complete: it identifies the language of origin (Law French), the legal context (old English law), the primary meaning (breaker), and supplies both the personal and nominal forms with chapter-specific citations to Britton.
No significant divergence exists across historical dictionaries because this is a narrow, archaic term that most later lexicographers did not independently treat. Burrill's entry is faithful to the Britton source material. What it does not supply — and what no historical dictionary in this corpus addresses — is the procedural context: what court heard these offenses, what penalties attached, or how brusure de pountz related to the common law obligation of bridge repair that would later be enforced through presentment and indictment. Researchers needing that context must go directly to Britton and its commentators.