Definition
De malo leone is a Latin phrase from medieval English legal procedure, meaning literally "of the evil lion" or "from the malevolent lion." The phrase appears in the context of Magna Carta (1 Hen. III, pr.) and refers to a form of essoin — a recognized excuse for non-appearance in court — grounded in the danger or peril of wild beasts or, more broadly, mortal peril encountered on the way to court. It belongs to the family of essoins de malo, which allowed a party summoned before a royal court to excuse absence on account of physical danger or illness.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in sources dealing with early English common law procedure, particularly the law of essoins. Researchers encountering it in original Latin texts, Year Books, or treatises on medieval practice should understand it as a procedural term, not a substantive legal right. Its appearance in connection with Magna Carta (the 1216 reissue under Henry III, referenced as 1 Hen. III) reflects the early common law's structured system for managing the obligations of personal appearance in royal courts.
Several navigational traps exist. First, the term belongs to a cluster of overlapping essoin categories — de malo lecti (illness in bed), de malo viae (danger of the road), and de malo leone — which are easily conflated in older sources. Burrill's entry is notably sparse, pointing only to the Magna Carta provenance without elaboration, which means researchers must supplement with Bracton, Glanvill, or Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law for substantive procedural context. Second, "malo leone" is occasionally rendered in variant spellings or abbreviated forms in manuscript sources and early printed editions, so searching on the exact phrase alone may miss relevant occurrences. Third, this term has no modern American or English common law survival — it is purely historical and will not appear in post-medieval sources except as antiquarian reference.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is minimal: "Malleon. Mag. Cart. 1 Hen. III. pr." This single line confirms only two things — the association with Magna Carta and the existence of a related term "Malleon," which appears to be a contracted or variant form. Burrill does not define the essoin procedure in this entry, presumably cross-referencing it from other entries on essoins generally.
The poverty of Burrill's treatment reflects a broader pattern in nineteenth-century legal dictionaries: terms surviving purely from medieval Latin pleading practice received brief, citation-only entries because they had ceased to have any practical significance. Researchers should not take the brevity as an indication that the term is trivial in its historical context — essoins were a significant feature of Angevin and early Plantagenet procedure, and the de malo categories defined when a litigant's failure to appear could be excused without penalty.
No other historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus appear to cover this term with greater depth. Tomlin's, Jacob's, and Bouvier's dictionaries either omit it entirely or treat it within broader essoin entries without isolating de malo leone as a discrete phrase.
Jurisdictional Note
This term has no modern jurisdictional application. It is confined to the historical law of medieval England and will only be encountered in scholarship, edited primary sources, or antiquarian legal dictionaries. No American jurisdiction ever adopted essoin procedure in this form.