Definition
A wrong-doer; an offender; a person who commits a wrongful or criminal act. The term is Law French in origin and appears in early English legal texts to designate one who has done a misdeed — whether in the sense of a tortfeasor, a criminal actor, or more broadly any person who has acted contrary to law or right. It does not map precisely onto any single modern category; depending on context, it may describe someone now termed a defendant, an offender, a tortfeasor, or simply a wrongdoer.
Common Confusion
MESFESOUR should not be conflated with MISFEASOR, though the concepts are closely related. Misfeasor in modern usage typically refers to one who commits misfeasance — the improper performance of a lawful act — whereas mesfesour was used historically as a broader term for any wrongdoer regardless of the nature of the wrong. Similarly, mesfesour differs from MALFEASOR (one who commits malfeasance, i.e., an inherently wrongful act), though historical sources do not always maintain that distinction with precision.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English legal records, Year Books, or texts rooted in the Law French tradition will encounter mesfesour as a general descriptive label for a party who has committed some wrong. Its breadth is both its defining feature and its chief research hazard: the term does not tell you whether the conduct at issue was criminal, tortious, or merely in breach of some customary obligation. Context and the surrounding procedural posture of the document must supply that information.
The term will not appear in modern primary sources. If you encounter it in a historical document, treat it as a pointer to the identity of an accused or liable party rather than as a term of art carrying technical legal elements. Cross-reference the surrounding text for the nature of the wrong alleged and the form of action or proceeding involved.
Researchers should also be alert to variant spellings. Law French terms appear inconsistently across manuscripts and early printed books. Mesfesour may appear as mesfaisour, mesfeasor, meffesour, or in other forms. Burrill cites Britton (c. 15, 22, 29) as the authority, and Britton's text is one of the principal early sources for Law French legal vocabulary in the English tradition.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole entry among the shelf sources and defines the term concisely: "A wrong-doer; an offender; a criminal," with citation to Britton. The definition is accurate as far as it goes, but the single-line treatment understates the breadth of the term's historical application. Britton, the late thirteenth-century legal treatise written in Law French and attributed to John le Breton, uses the term across multiple chapters in a range of contexts — felonious conduct, trespassory wrongs, and general misbehavior — confirming that mesfesour was not a term of narrow technical meaning but a functional descriptor for any party in the role of wrongdoer.
No other shelf sources include this term, which is consistent with its status as archaic Law French vocabulary that passed out of active legal use well before the modern dictionaries were compiled. The absence of the term from later dictionaries should not be read as evidence that it was obscure in its own era; it was simply rendered obsolete by the transition from Law French to English as the language of English legal practice.
Jurisdictional Note
The term belongs exclusively to the early English legal tradition. It has no counterpart in civil law systems and does not appear in American legal sources except occasionally in historical or comparative scholarship.