Definition
A historical tax paid by inhabitants of boroughs and municipal corporations toward the support of the community. Escot is closely associated with, and appears most often as part of, the compound term "scot and lot" — a levy assessed proportionally against residents based on their means and civic standing. The Second Edition of Black's also records a secondary sense: to build or equip, though this usage appears in no other standard legal authority and may reflect an isolated or scribal inclusion.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in current general use. Wiktionary does not carry an independent entry for "escot" as a standalone term.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 treats "escot" as obsolete and directs readers simply to "scot," defined there as a tax or payment. The term had already dropped from ordinary English by the time of that edition.
The gap between common and legal usage is narrow here only because both registers have abandoned the term. In legal sources, escot survives exclusively as a historical relic identifying a specific municipal tax obligation, not as a general word for payment or contribution.
Common Confusion
Escot is easily overlooked as a variant or misspelling of "scot" (as in scot and lot) or confused with "scute," "scott," or other orthographic neighbors in older manuscript sources. Researchers working in borough records, plea rolls, or early corporation archives should expect variant spellings — esscot, escote, escott — and treat them as the same instrument. Escot is also occasionally confused with "tallage," a related but distinct form of medieval municipal levy; tallage was imposed by lords on villeins and towns, while scot and lot applied to freemen of the borough assessed according to their capacity to pay.
Why It Matters in Research
Escot is a term almost entirely confined to historical legal materials. Researchers will encounter it primarily in:
— Pre-modern English borough records and corporation charters, where liability for scot and lot — including escot — determined voting rights and civic standing. Inability to pay scot and lot could bar a resident from franchise participation, making escot relevant to franchise and election history as well as tax history.
— Early American colonial materials that borrowed English borough law structures, where scot and lot occasionally appeared in local governance frameworks before being displaced by statutory taxation schemes.
— Treatises on municipal corporations written through the nineteenth century, which preserved escot terminology when tracing the history of local fiscal powers.
The term's significance in research is almost always connective rather than standalone: finding escot in a source is a signal to pursue the full scot and lot framework, the jurisdiction's borough constitution, and the relationship between tax obligation and civic rights. The secondary sense recorded in Black's 2nd Edition — "to build or equip" — is not corroborated by other legal dictionaries or historical treatises and should be treated with caution; its provenance and authority are unclear.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary are in close agreement: escot was a tax paid in boroughs and corporations toward community support, defined in relation to scot and lot. The Second Edition adds the "to build or equip" gloss without explanation or authority, a divergence worth noting but not heavily weighting. Webster's 1913, the closest common-language source, confirms the term was obsolete even by the nineteenth century and points readers to "scot" as the root. No significant disagreement exists across sources on the core meaning; the historical dictionaries simply reflect how thoroughly this term had receded from active legal use by the time of their compilation. What the historical dictionaries do not address is the connection between escot liability and franchise rights — a linkage well documented in English borough history but absent from dictionary treatment.
Jurisdictional Note
Escot as a live legal concept belongs entirely to English borough law and has no meaningful survival in American statutory or common law. Researchers working in English legal history or early colonial American law may encounter it; those working in modern jurisdictions will not.