Definition
An obsolete Law French term appearing in early English legal records, carrying the approximate meaning of smothered, famished, or choked. The term appears in pleadings and indictments from the medieval period, likely used to describe a cause or manner of death — most plausibly in the context of homicide or accidental fatality proceedings where the precise mode of killing required specification. Its practical legal significance was as a term of art in the descriptive language of early criminal pleadings, where accuracy in stating the manner of death was a formal requirement.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English criminal records, coroners' rolls, or medieval plea rolls may encounter this term in descriptions of manner of death. Its importance is almost entirely archival: the term does not survive into modern legal usage and has no contemporary doctrinal significance.
The primary trap here is lexical. Law French was not a standardized language, and variant spellings are common in manuscript sources. A researcher who encounters a form like eschaude or a near-variant may not immediately recognize it as a descriptor of suffocation or starvation, potentially misreading a cause-of-death allegation. Context within a pleading — particularly proximity to language of felony, homicide, or inquisition — will typically confirm the term's role.
Burrill cites Kelham's Law French Dictionary as the primary authority for the "smothered" gloss, while also noting the alternative rendering of "famished" or "choked" from another Law French dictionary source. The fact that Burrill himself appends a quære signals that even nineteenth-century legal lexicographers were uncertain about the precise meaning and proper usage of this word. That uncertainty compounds the difficulty for modern researchers: the term is rare enough that contextual confirmation from parallel sources is advisable before drawing conclusions about what a specific record intended.
This term connects to the broader vocabulary of Law French cause-of-death pleading, a category that includes terms like neyé (drowned), occis (slain), and brusé (burned). Researchers cataloguing manner-of-death language in medieval English criminal records will find eschaude belongs to this cluster.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary entry for this term. Burrill gives two possible meanings — smothered (citing Kelham) and famished or choked (citing an unspecified Law French dictionary) — and explicitly flags uncertainty with a quære. This is a notably candid entry for a nineteenth-century legal dictionary, suggesting the term was already of doubtful clarity by the time Burrill compiled his work.
No entry appears in Tomlins, Jacob, or Bouvier for this term, which further confirms its narrow and archaic character. The absence from broader legal dictionaries is itself informative: eschaude was not a term that migrated into common law pleading practice as a stable term of art, but rather persisted as a relic of Law French usage in specific medieval record types.
Kelham's Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language (1779) is the foundational source Burrill relies upon for the "smothered" gloss and remains the most authoritative point of reference for researchers who need to pursue this term further in primary sources.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively historical English law in origin and has no counterpart in American legal usage. Researchers in Anglo-American legal history will encounter it, if at all, only in pre-modern English records.