Definition
A Law French preposition meaning "under" or "below." Used in medieval English legal texts to indicate subordination, physical placement, or qualification by reference to an authority or instrument. Appears in compound legal phrases, including:
1. Desouth le petit seale — under the privy (petty) seal; indicating a document issued under the authority of the lesser royal seal as distinguished from the Great Seal.
2. Desouth nosmes — undernamed; referring to persons named below or later in a legal document.
3. Desouth serure — under lock; indicating physical custody or secured enclosure of a thing.
Why It Matters in Research
DESOUTH is encountered almost exclusively in Law French sources from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. Researchers working in Year Books, early statutes, or medieval plea rolls may meet the term in its compound forms before encountering it in isolation. The danger is misreading the preposition as part of a proper name or as a substantive legal concept rather than a purely grammatical particle carrying a spatial or hierarchical meaning.
The three attested phrases point to distinct research contexts. Desouth le petit seale connects to the administrative history of the royal seals — a subject with its own substantial literature — and will appear in documents routed through the Privy Seal Office rather than Chancery. Researchers tracing the authority of a royal writ must know which seal authenticated it, and desouth le petit seale is the marker. Desouth nosmes is a drafting convention equivalent to the later Latin subscriptus or the modern phrase "the undersigned" or "as named below"; it signals that the operative names follow, which has consequences for how a document's parties are identified. Desouth serure surfaces in property and bailment contexts where physical custody and security of goods are at issue.
Because Law French vocabulary was never fully standardized, variant spellings (dessouth, desous, dessouz) may appear across manuscript sources. Cross-checking against Kelham's Law French Dictionary and Godefroy's Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française is advisable when a form does not match Burrill exactly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical dictionary source for this entry and provides a concise, reliable account. Burrill correctly identifies the term as Law French, correctly glosses it as "under; below," and supplies three illustrative phrases with specific statutory and Year Book citations: Articuli super Cartas chapter 6 (desouth le petit seale), the Statute of Westminster I chapter 39 (desouth nosmes), and a Year Book from Michaelmas term of 5 Edward III, folio 34 (desouth serure). These are real and verifiable sources, and Burrill's treatment, though brief, is accurate. No significant disagreement exists among historical authorities because the term is a simple preposition with stable meaning; the variation across sources is orthographic rather than semantic.
What Burrill does not supply — and what no single dictionary entry can fully address — is the administrative context for the privy seal usage. That context is better pursued through treatises on English constitutional and administrative history.
Jurisdictional Note
DESOUTH is a term of medieval English common law and has no operative use in modern Anglo-American jurisdictions. It does not appear in current U.S. or English statutory or case law. It is relevant only to historical legal research involving English sources predating the decline of Law French in formal legal writing, roughly post-1650.