Definition
De malo ville (Latin: "of illness in the town") is a species of essoin — a formal excuse for non-appearance in court — applicable in a narrow procedural situation: a party who had already appeared in court became ill in the very town where the court was sitting and was consequently unable to continue attending. Unlike essoins cast before appearance, de malo ville arose after the party had presented himself but before any answer to the suit had been entered.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with medieval English plea rolls or procedural treatises will encounter essoins as a recurring feature of early common law litigation. De malo ville occupies a very specific slot within essoin doctrine: it is neither the essoin de malo lecti (illness so severe the party is confined to bed) nor a standard pre-appearance excuse, but an intermediate case triggered by sudden incapacitation during proceedings already underway. Understanding this distinction matters when reading Bracton or Fleta, where the categories of essoin are treated with technical precision. The term does not appear in Spelman's glossary — a significant gap noted by Burrill — meaning researchers relying on Spelman alone will find no guidance here. Bracton himself labels de malo ville anomalous, suggesting it sat uneasily within the essoin framework even by thirteenth-century standards. This unusual status means the term may be underrepresented or inconsistently treated across medieval sources, and researchers should expect thin coverage outside Bracton and Fleta directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the primary English-language legal dictionary treatment of this term. Burrill defines it by reference to Bracton (fol. 363b) and Reeves' History of the English Law (1 Reeves' Hist. 417), and pointedly notes Spelman's silence on the term. Burrill also cross-references Fleta, lib. 6, c. 13, which provides a secondary medieval authority. Bracton's own characterization of the essoin as anomalous is significant: it signals that de malo ville did not fit neatly into the regularized essoin categories that medieval procedure was otherwise systematizing. No disagreement among historical sources is possible here given how sparse the secondary coverage is — the term's history is essentially confined to the primary medieval texts Bracton and Fleta, with Reeves offering the main narrative account for modern researchers.
Jurisdictional Note
De malo ville is a term of medieval English common law procedure with no parallel development in other common law jurisdictions. It has no operative significance in modern practice anywhere and appears only in historical legal research concerning the pre-modern English courts.