ESCEPPA

4 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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ESCEPPAAuthored
The Law Mind • 608 words
Definition
A historical measure of corn. The term appears in early English legal sources as a unit of agrarian measurement, cited by Cowell in his legal dictionary. It carries no modern legal significance and is encountered almost exclusively in medieval land records, manorial accounts, and early English legal glossaries. ---
Why It Matters in Research
ESCEPPA is a trap term for researchers working in pre-modern English land law, manorial records, and agrarian legal history. Its primary research hazard is misidentification: the term sits in close proximity — in dictionary arrangement and in manuscript sources — to ESCHEAT and its variants (ESCHAETA, ESCHEATOR), and all three appear in the same manorial and feudal land contexts. A researcher scanning period documents or historical glossaries may encounter ESCEPPA in the middle of extended ESCHEAT discussions, as the dictionary entries above demonstrate; the source dictionaries treat it as a one-line aside before proceeding to the far more substantive law of escheat. The term is sourced in the Law Mind corpus almost entirely through Cowell's *Interpreter*, a Jacobean legal glossary that remains one of the principal references for obsolete agrarian and manorial vocabulary. Researchers working in English manorial court rolls, reeve's accounts, or early estate surveys may encounter the term as a quantity in assessments, renders, or dues — contexts where knowing it denotes a corn measure (rather than a legal right, process, or status) prevents misreading an evidentiary record. There is no modern survival of this term in any common law jurisdiction. It does not appear in statutory codes, reported cases, or contemporary legal usage. Research need for ESCEPPA is confined to legal history, medieval studies, and archival work. ---
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries treat ESCEPPA identically: a single-sentence definition citing Cowell, offering no further elaboration. This uniformity reflects the term's status as received antiquarian vocabulary rather than living legal doctrine — each compiler copied the Cowell reference without independent analysis because there was nothing further to analyze. Notably, each dictionary embeds the ESCEPPA entry immediately before or within extensive treatment of ESCHEAT (ESCHAETA), which runs to several paragraphs across the same sources. The Latin maxim quoted in those adjacent entries — *Eschaeta derivatur a verbo Gallico eschoir, quod est accidere, quia accidit domino ex eventu et ex insperato* ("Escheat is derived from the French word 'eschoir,' which signifies to happen, because it falls to the lord from an event and from an unforeseen circumstance") — is presented in all three sources in the context of escheats, not esceppa. Researchers consulting physical or scanned versions of these dictionaries should be careful not to attribute the escheat maxims to the ESCEPPA entry, as the visual proximity in compressed dictionary columns creates a real reading hazard. No historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus provides further detail on measurement equivalents, regional variations in quantity, or the specific legal contexts in which ESCEPPA appeared as a term of art. The record, as preserved, begins and ends with Cowell. ---
Related Terms
ESCHEAT — The adjacent and far more significant legal doctrine; not related in meaningonly in dictionary proximity and manorial context. ESCHEATOR — Officer responsible for administering escheats; similarly proximate in historical sources. COWELL — John Cowellauthor of *The Interpreter* (1607); the authoritative source for this term in the legal dictionary tradition. RENDER — A manorial obligation payable in kindthe broader category within which corn measures like esceppa would appear in historical records. MANORIAL TENURE — The feudal land-holding framework within which agrarian measures held legal significance.
ESCEPPAmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
A measure of corn. Cowell. Eschæta derivatur a verbo Gallico eschoir, quod est accidere, quia accidit some unforeseen contingency, in which case the land naturally results back, by a kind of reversion, to the original grantor, or lord of the fee. 2 Bl. Comm. 15. It is the casual descent, in the nature of forfeiture, of lands and tenements within his manor, to a lord, either on failure of issue of F the tenant dying seised or on account of the felony of such tenant. Jacob. Also the land or fee itself, which thus fell back to the lord. Such lands were called "excadentia," or "terræ excadentiales." Fleta, lib. 6, c. 1; Co. Litt. 13a. G In American law. Escheat signifies a reversion of property to the state in conse- quence of a want of any individual competent to inherit. The state is deemed to occupy the H place and hold the rights of the feudal lord. See 4 Kent, Comm. 423, 424. "Escheat at feudal law was the right of the lord of a fee to re-enter upon the same when it became vacant by the extinction of the blood of the tenant. This extinction might either be per defectum san- guinis or else per delictum tenentis, where the course of descent was broken by the corruption of the blood of the tenant. As a fee might be holden either of the crown or from some inferior lord, the escheat was not always to the crown. The word 'escheat,' in this country, at the present time, merely indicates the preferable right of the state to an estate left vacant, and without there being any one in existence able to make claim thereto." 29 Amer. Dec. 232, note. ESCHEAT, WRIT OF. A writ which anciently lay for a lord, to recover possession of lands that had escheated to him. Reg. Orig. 1646; Fitzh. Nat. Brev. 143.
ESCEPPAmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888
-A measure of corn. Cowell. Eschaeta derivatur a verbo Gallico eschoir, quod est accidere, quia accidit domino ex eventu et ex insperato (Co. Litt. 93): Escheat is derived from the French word eschoir, which signifies to happen, because it falls to the lord from an event and from an unforeseen circumstance. Eschaetæ vulgo dicuntur quæ decidentibus iis quæ de rege tenent, cum not existit ratione sanguinis hæres, ad fiscum relabuntur (Co. Litt. 13): Those things are commonly called escheats which revert to the exchequer from a failure of issue in those who hold of the king, when there does not exist any heir by consanguinity. ESCHEAT.-NORMAN-FRENCH: eschete, from escheoir, to fall to (in the sense of a wind-fall); LATIN: cadere. Britt. 28 a; Litt. 2 682; Littre 8. v. 1. Lands falling by accident to the lord of whom they are holden (Co. Litt. 13a, It is derived from 92b), or to the crown. the feudal rule, that where an estate in feesimple comes to an end, the land reverts to the lord by whose ancestors or predecessors the estate was originally created. (Wms. Real Prop. 126; except in the case TAINDER), as has also the rule that a person could not trace descent to land through an ancestor who has been attainted of treason or felony, so that the land escheated to the lord. Stat. 3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 106, 10; 1 Steph. Com. 445. 3. Escheat is not properly a purchase in the technical sense of the word, for the land thus acquired by the lord descends as the seignory would have descended, into the place of which it comes. Burt. Comp. 325; Hargrave's note to Co. Litt. 18b. See INQUEST OF OFFICE; PURCHASE; SEIGNORY; TITLE. ESCHEAT, (defined). 2 Bl. Com. 244. (how arises). 9 Mass. 364, 368. (title by). 1 Chit, Gen. Pr. 279.
ESCEPPAmain
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910
A measure of corn. Cowell. 436 ESCHEATOR Eschseta derivatur a verbo Gallico eschoir, quod est accidere, quia accidit domino ex eventu et ex insperato. Co. Litt. 98. Escheat is derived from the French word “eschoir,” which signifies to happen, because it falls to the lord from an event and from an unforeseen circumstance. Eschssts vulgo dicuntur qua deoidentibus ils quz de rege tenent, cum non existit ratione sanguinis hsres, ad fiscum relabuntur. Co. Litt. 18. Those things are commonly called “escheats” which revert to the exchequer from a failure of issue in those who hold of the king, when there does not exist any heir by consanguinity.

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