Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning shippage, or passage by sea. The term denotes the act or right of shipping — being conveyed or transported by vessel across navigable waters. It appears in historical English legal sources primarily as a term of feudal and maritime obligation, signifying sea passage or the condition of traveling by ship. Also spelled skippeson.
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Why It Matters in Research
Eskippeson is encountered almost exclusively in historical legal texts and source documents predating the eighteenth century. Researchers will find the term in glossaries and word-lists drawn from Law French usage — the hybrid legal dialect that dominated English legal records from the Norman Conquest through the early modern period. Its practical significance in original documents is narrow: the term surfaces most often in the context of feudal services, obligations incident to tenure, or maritime arrangements where the right or duty of sea transport required naming.
The principal trap for researchers is variant spelling. The same concept appears as eskippeson, skippeson, and potentially further corruptions depending on the scrivener and period of the document. When searching manuscript records or printed case reporters for this term, researchers should expand their search strings accordingly. Optical character recognition errors in digitized historical sources will compound the problem.
All four source dictionaries trace the definition back to a single authority — Cowell, referring to John Cowell's Interpreter (1607), an early English legal glossary. This means the dictionary tradition on this term is essentially a chain of citations to one sixteenth/seventeenth-century source rather than independent corroboration. Researchers who need more than a gloss should go directly to Cowell rather than treating the dictionary consensus as evidence of wider usage.
The term has no modern legal currency. It does not appear in contemporary statutes, regulations, or case law. Any encounter with it outside a historical glossary context warrants careful scrutiny of the surrounding document's authenticity and dating.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries — Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, and Burrill's — are in complete agreement on meaning: shippage, or passage by sea. The definitions are nearly word-for-word identical, reflecting the common practice of the period where compilers borrowed from one another and from Cowell directly. Burrill adds modest value by identifying the Law French derivation from eskipper (to ship), which gestures toward the term's linguistic structure without unpacking it further.
No source offers a usage example, a reported case, or a statutory reference. This is consistent with the term's character as a piece of vocabulary preserved by the glossarial tradition rather than by active litigation. The historical dictionaries do not disagree, but they also do not illuminate the term beyond its bare translation. Researchers should not mistake unanimity among these sources for richness of documentation.
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Jurisdictional Note
Eskippeson is a term of English legal history with no recognized equivalent or surviving usage in any modern common law jurisdiction. It is of relevance only to historical research into English legal records, particularly those drafted in or drawing upon Law French.
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