Definition
In old English law, a rescuer; a person who commits a rescous. The term refers to one who unlawfully retakes goods that have been lawfully distrained, or who forcibly frees another person or property from legal custody or process. The resoussor acts in opposition to lawful authority — typically an officer executing a distress or levy — and the act itself was treated as a contempt of legal process and a punishable wrong.
Common Confusion
RESOUSSOR / RESCUER: In modern English, "rescuer" carries an entirely positive connotation — someone who saves another from danger. In old English law, the cognate term resoussor carried no such approval. The resoussor was not a hero but an offender, one who obstructed the administration of justice by interfering with lawful process. Researchers encountering this term in historical sources should resist the instinct to read it charitably.
RESOUSSOR / POUND-BREACH: A resoussor who frees impounded goods or animals before they reach the pound commits an act related to, but technically distinct from, pound-breach (breaking open a pound to reclaim distrained property after impoundment). The two offenses were sometimes conflated in older sources but arise at different points in the distraint process.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term you will encounter only in historical English legal sources — it has no living statutory or common-law presence in modern American or English law. Researchers working in early modern English records, including Year Books, Coke's reports, and manorial court rolls, may find resoussor appearing in proceedings related to distraint, replevin, and the law of distress generally.
The critical navigational point: resoussor is procedurally downstream from rescous. To understand the term, researchers must first locate the parent concept (rescous or rescue in the legal sense) and trace how courts characterized the actor as distinct from the act. Black's 2nd Edition treats the term briefly, pointing to Cro. Jac. 419 and Cowell's legal dictionary — both legitimate historical sources worth consulting for fuller context.
Because the term appears almost exclusively in pre-18th-century English legal writing, researchers using digitized corpus materials should search variant spellings (rescouser, rescossor, and related forms) alongside resoussor, as spelling was not standardized in the period when this terminology was active.
The concept itself — interference with lawful distraint — survived into modern law under different vocabulary (obstruction of process, interference with levy), so researchers tracing doctrinal lineage should cross-reference those modern equivalents rather than expecting the term resoussor to appear in post-18th-century sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the only dictionary coverage in the Law Mind corpus, defining resoussor concisely as "a rescuer; one who commits a rescous" with citations to Cro. Jac. 419 (Croke's Jacobean reports) and Cowell's Interpreter. The entry is accurate but thin — it confirms the term's meaning and vintage without elaborating on the legal consequences attaching to the resoussor's act or the procedural context in which the term arose.
Cowell's Interpreter (1607) is the more appropriate historical reference for depth on this term, as it was compiled precisely to explain archaic and technical legal vocabulary of the period when resoussor was in active use. Researchers who require more than Black's skeletal entry should treat Cowell as the primary source and Croke's reports as the case authority.
No modern legal dictionary in the standard corpus carries this term as a live entry, which correctly signals its status as obsolete vocabulary rather than continuing doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
Resoussor is a term of old English law only. It has no recognized equivalent in American legal vocabulary and does not appear as an operative term in any U.S. jurisdiction. Researchers in American legal history may encounter the underlying concept — interference with distraint or levy — but not this terminology.