Definition
In English law, a tax, rate, or assessment. The term appears in historical legal sources as a general designation for a compulsory financial levy — essentially a synonym for "cess" or the root of "assessment." Burrill notes that the same sources call the concept "assess" and "sessment," indicating that "sess" functions as a compressed form of the same word family rather than a distinct legal institution.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Marijuana, cannabis. Slang, primarily North American.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To lay a tax upon; to assess. Marked obsolete even in 1913.
The gap here is significant in both directions. A modern researcher encountering "sess" in a general-language source will find a drug slang term with no legal content. A researcher consulting Webster's 1913 will find the legal meaning intact but already labeled archaic. Neither modern common usage nor contemporary dictionaries preserve the legal sense. Researchers must treat "sess" as a historical term of art requiring deliberate contextual recognition.
Common Confusion
"Sess," "cess," "assess," and "assessment" share a common root and are used interchangeably in some historical sources, including the Callis sources cited by Burrill. Modern legal vocabulary has consolidated around "assessment" and abandoned "sess" and "cess" almost entirely. A reader who encounters "sess" without context may not recognize it as a tax-related term at all, particularly if relying on modern reference tools.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in English legal history, particularly in materials related to local taxation, sewers commissions, or ecclesiastical rates, will encounter "sess" as a routine synonym for levy or assessment. Several navigational points are worth noting:
First, the term is essentially dead in modern legal writing. Its appearance in a source is itself a dating signal — documents or treatises using "sess" unmodified are almost certainly pre-twentieth century English in origin.
Second, the Burrill citation to Callis on Sewers is a primary pointer for researchers following this term into source material. Callis's treatise on the law of sewers (early seventeenth century) used "sess," "assess," and "sessment" in close proximity, suggesting the terminology was already unsettled in the period when English drainage and local taxation law was being systematized.
Third, "sess" in Irish historical legal usage sometimes appears in the context of "cess" — a local military or victualing tax imposed on Irish communities under English colonial administration. Researchers working in Irish legal history should be alert to this specialized application, which carries political and constitutional freight distinct from the ordinary English tax sense.
Fourth, Rapalje & Lawrence provides only a page reference (1178) with no substantive definition in the available entry, which is itself informative: the term was considered self-evident or sufficiently covered by cross-reference at the time of that dictionary's compilation.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical legal dictionaries are in precise agreement on the core definition: a tax, rate, or assessment. Black's (both editions) and Burrill offer identical substance. Burrill adds the most value by tying the term explicitly to Callis on Sewers and noting the interchangeable use of "assess," "sessment," and "sess" within the same source — a useful philological point for researchers trying to track variations in spelling or form across manuscript and printed sources.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: jurisdictional reach beyond England, any distinction between a "sess" and other specific levy types (such as a rate or a scot), or the term's trajectory into disuse. None of the sources gesture toward modern equivalents, which reflects the term's having been absorbed entirely into "assessment" by the time these dictionaries were compiled.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Taxation (Historical); Local Government Finance (English Law); Sewers Commissions.