Definition
A scar or permanent mark left on the body by a wound. In old English law, skerda referred specifically to the bodily evidence of a wound — the lasting physical trace remaining after an injury had healed. The term appears in the context of criminal pleading and the law of wounds, where the visible remnant of an injury carried legal significance as proof of the original harm.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering skerda in historical English legal materials should understand it as a term of proof and pleading, not merely description. In medieval criminal procedure, physical evidence of wounding — including the scar itself — could be required to substantiate an appeal of mayhem or other violent offense. The scar was not incidental; it was evidentiary. A researcher reading Bracton or derivative sources will find that the condition and visibility of wounds, including their healed remnants, were subject to formal examination.
This term will appear almost exclusively in Latin-language medieval sources and their early modern transcriptions or glosses. It does not survive into modern legal usage and will not be found in contemporary statutes or case law. Its significance is entirely historical. Researchers tracing the law of mayhem, appeal of felony, or the procedural requirements for wound-based criminal actions will find skerda embedded in the technical vocabulary of that tradition.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole shelf source providing a definition, and its entry is deliberately spare: "A scar. Bract. lib. 3, (de corona,) c. 24, num. 2." The citation points to Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, Book 3, the portion treating the crown pleas, specifically the chapter on wounding. Bracton's treatment of wounds distinguishes between the fresh wound (plaga), the healed wound evidenced by the scar, and the broader category of bodily harm relevant to an appeal. Skerda fits within that framework as the physical residue confirming that a wound had in fact occurred.
No other major historical law dictionary in the standard corpus — not Cowell, not Jacob, not Tomlin — appears to treat skerda as a standalone entry, suggesting it was recognized as specialized Latin vocabulary confined to Bracton's usage rather than a term circulating widely through the common law lexicon. Burrill's inclusion reflects his broader project of recovering Latinized technical terms from Bractonian and pre-Bractonian sources that had largely passed out of active legal use by the nineteenth century.
The term's root meaning (scar) is stable across all sources that touch it; there is no recorded divergence in meaning. The historical difficulty is not ambiguity but obscurity — skerda requires knowledge of the specific Bracton passage to interpret correctly in context.
Jurisdictional Note
Skerda is a term of old English law with no recorded adoption in other common law jurisdictions. It is irrelevant to American, Scottish, Irish, or colonial legal materials except insofar as those sources directly quote or gloss Bracton.