Definition
An archaic Law French verb meaning to nonsuit a plaintiff — that is, to subject a party to a nonsuit by their failure to appear, failure to prosecute, or withdrawal from the action. The term appears in early English legal records as a procedural act rather than a noun describing a party or a judgment. In practice, to be nonsuered was to have one's action terminated against one on grounds of default or abandonment, without a determination on the merits.
The term is effectively the verb form of nonsuit, drawn from the Law French construction of medieval common law pleading.
Why It Matters in Research
NONSUER is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in Year Book materials and early English plea rolls, not in modern legal writing. Its appearance signals procedurally dense medieval common law records where Latin and Law French alternate freely and where procedural acts are often recorded in compressed verbal shorthand.
The critical research trap is mistaking NONSUER for a noun — a person who nonsuites, or one who is nonsuited. In the sources where this term appears, it functions as a verb, and the surrounding syntax must be read carefully to determine which party is acting and which is being subjected to the nonsuit. Burrill's entry illustrates this directly: "se retreist et el fuit nonsue" — he withdrew himself, and she was nonsuited. The grammatical subject shifts mid-sentence, a feature common to Law French procedural recitations.
Researchers working in the Year Books or early plea roll transcripts should be aware that variant spellings proliferate: nonsuy, nounsiwy, nonsue, and related forms all appear in close temporal proximity across the Edward II and Edward III reigns. No single spelling dominates. Search strategies in digitized manuscript corpora must account for this orthographic instability, and manual verification of surrounding context will almost always be necessary to confirm procedural meaning.
This term connects directly to the broader category of nonsuit practice, which itself underwent significant development from its medieval origins through the common law reforms of the nineteenth century. The procedural act recorded by NONSUER — a plaintiff's withdrawal or default leading to termination of the action — is the ancestor of the modern voluntary and involuntary nonsuit, but the mechanisms and consequences differ substantially across this span of time.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary historical legal dictionary source for this term, and his treatment is characteristically compressed. He identifies NONSUER as Law French, classifies it as belonging to old practice, provides the verbal definition (to nonsuit), and grounds it in three Year Book citations spanning the reigns of Edward II and Edward III. The citations — Yearb. M. 3 Edw. III. 40; P. 8 Edw. III. 9; H. 3 Edw. II. 71 — are the kind of primary anchors that reward direct consultation when the surrounding procedural context matters. Burrill quotes the Latin and Law French passage without extended commentary, which is typical of his handling of obsolete procedural terms.
No other standard historical legal dictionary in wide circulation gives NONSUER a dedicated entry. Tomlin, Bouvier, and Black do not treat the verb form separately, folding the concept instead under NONSUIT. This means Burrill stands as effectively the sole dictionary authority, and researchers should treat his entry as a finding aid pointing toward the Year Books rather than as a self-sufficient definition.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is any sustained analysis of how the act recorded by NONSUER fits into the broader architecture of early common law procedure — the relationship between withdrawal, default, and the developing concept of nonsuit as a formal procedural outcome. That analysis must be sought in treatises and legal historical scholarship rather than in the dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
NONSUER is a term of English common law origin and has no independent life in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. Its relevance is confined to English legal history and the materials that record or analyze medieval English practice.