Definition
An archaic legal term from medieval English law referring to mast — the nuts, acorns, and similar tree-produced fodder used to feed swine — or, by extension, the payment or toll levied for the right to graze or feed hogs on such mast. The term encompasses both the physical produce of forest trees (acorns, beechnuts, and comparable forage) and the monetary equivalent charged for access to that resource.
Why It Matters in Research
PESSONA is a term a modern researcher will encounter only in medieval English legal records, forest law documents, and historical property instruments. Its significance lies almost entirely in the context of manorial rights and forest tenure, where the right to graze pigs on acorns and mast — known broadly as pannage — was a distinct and valuable incident of landholding. Researchers working with medieval court rolls, forest eyres, or grants of common rights should recognize PESSONA as a term of art specific to that resource regime.
The chief research trap is conflating PESSONA with the broader right of pannage itself. PESSONA identifies the substance (the mast and its monetary value) while pannage more properly names the right or the season of exercise. A document charging pessona is recording a toll or payment; a document granting pannage is conveying a right. The distinction matters when reading inquisitions post mortem, manorial extents, or grants that enumerate the components of a lord's forest revenues separately.
The term does not survive into modern law in any operative sense. Researchers encountering it in post-medieval sources are almost certainly working with historical recitation, copying from earlier instruments, or dealing with antiquarian legal writing. No contemporary statutory or common law meaning attaches to it.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries agree on the substance but differ modestly in framing. Black's (both editions) defines pessona as mast or money taken for mast, following Cowell's Interpreter — a seventeenth-century legal glossary — which was a standard reference for archaic and Latin terms of English law. Both Black's editions reproduce essentially the same entry with near-identical wording, suggesting no independent research beyond Cowell.
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the most useful of the three for a researcher. Burrill identifies PESSONA as Latin and situates it explicitly in "old English law," and crucially expands the definition to clarify that mast includes acorns, nuts, and other similar tree produce. Burrill's citation to a folio reference (fol. 222 b) — likely to Fitzherbert or a comparable legal authority — gives the term a more grounded documentary lineage than the Cowell citation alone provides.
What none of the historical dictionaries fully develops is the operational context: the forest law framework within which pessona functioned, the relationship to pannage rights, and the administrative mechanisms (forest courts, swanimotes) through which such payments were assessed and collected. For that context, the dictionaries must be supplemented with secondary sources on English forest law and manorial custom.
Jurisdictional Note
PESSONA is a term of medieval English law and has no recognized equivalent or parallel development in other common law jurisdictions. It is not operative in any modern legal system.