Definition
A hired soldier who departs from military service without permission or license. The term refers specifically to a mercenary or soldier-for-hire who abandons his post or leaves the field without having obtained lawful leave to do so — a form of unauthorized desertion in the context of feudal or early modern military service.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow, archaic term of English military law with virtually no modern legal application. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in primary sources from the medieval and early modern periods, particularly in treatises addressing military tenure, feudal obligation, and the law of arms. Coke's Institutes, referenced by Bouvier, is the principal source, and the term's appearance there reflects Coke's systematic effort to recover and define obsolete categories of English law.
A researcher encountering this term in a historical document should treat it as a marker of military disciplinary law rather than contract or criminal law in the modern sense. The distinction between a hired soldier (as opposed to a feudal vassal serving by tenure obligation) is embedded in the definition — "hired" signals a contractual rather than tenurial relationship, which may be significant in determining what legal consequences attached to the departure. The unauthorized nature of the departure ("without license") is the operative wrong.
Because the term does not survive into common law casebooks, digests, or modern statutory frameworks, Law Mind corpus researchers should not expect to find it outside of early treatise material and antiquarian legal dictionaries. Cross-referencing Coke's Institutes directly (4 Inst. 128) remains the most productive path for any substantive research into the term's original context and legal consequences.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the sole Law Mind source for this term, and its entry is brief: "A hired soldier who departs without license. 4 Inst. 128." This economy of treatment reflects how thoroughly the term had passed out of active legal use by the time Bouvier compiled his dictionary in the nineteenth century. Bouvier preserves it as a historical artifact rather than a working legal concept, pointing the reader directly to Coke rather than offering independent analysis.
The reference to Coke's Institutes (Fourth Institute, page 128) places the term within Coke's survey of courts and jurisdictions, which addressed military law and the jurisdiction of the constable and marshal — the historical tribunals with cognizance over offenses committed in the field or outside the realm. This jurisdictional context matters: the constable and marshal's court operated under rules distinct from common law courts, and terms like essiz belong to that parallel legal world rather than to the main current of English common law development.
No other major historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus — including Jacob's Law Dictionary or Blount's Nomo-Lexicon — appear to have carried this entry, suggesting it was already obscure when Bouvier encountered it.