Definition
A re-summons. A second or renewed summons issued to compel a party's appearance in a proceeding after an initial summons has failed to produce the required attendance or response. The term is a Law French rendering of the concept now expressed in modern practice simply as "re-summons" or "alias summons."
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term will find it almost exclusively in medieval and early English legal texts, particularly those written in or drawing upon Law French. Its appearance in sources signals an era of procedure well before the standardization of common law process, when re-summons was a recognized formal step in the sequence of mesne process used to compel a defendant's appearance. A researcher who encounters this word in a manuscript or early printed source should treat it as a procedural marker indicating that an initial summons had been issued and had not produced the required result, and that the court was advancing to the next stage of compulsory process. Because the term does not survive into modern legal vocabulary in this form, keyword searches in digitized corpora should also query "re-summons," "alias summons," and equivalent Latin forms. Do not expect to find this term in post-medieval English or American sources; its corpus footprint is narrow and period-specific.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only significant historical lexicographic treatment, identifying the term as Law French for "re-summons" and citing Britton, chapter 121, as the supporting authority. Britton, the thirteenth-century English legal treatise written in Law French and attributed to the reign of Edward I, is a reliable anchor for this term's period and usage. Burrill's entry is characteristically terse — a single line with a single source — which accurately reflects the term's limited circulation even in historical legal literature. No broader doctrinal elaboration appears in the available dictionary sources, and the term does not appear to have generated commentary or definition beyond this bare identification. Researchers should go directly to Britton for any substantive procedural context.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to English legal practice of the medieval period. It has no recognized counterpart in American law and does not appear in the legal vocabulary of any current common law jurisdiction.