Definition
Visores (Latin; Law French: vejours) is a term from old English legal practice referring to persons appointed by a court to perform official acts of viewing or inspection. The term carried two related but distinct functions in medieval procedure:
1. Viewers appointed to examine a party who had cast an essoin de malo lecti — that is, who had excused his absence from court on the ground of serious illness or infirmity. The visores would physically attend the absent party to determine whether the claimed illness was genuine and whether the party was truly incapable of appearing.
2. Jurors in certain specific actions, where the role of the viewer overlapped with or was formalized into something resembling a jury function.
The term is plural; the singular form is visor, though it appears almost exclusively in the plural in legal sources. The procedure presupposed a court's need for an independent, court-appointed fact-finder to substitute for what could not be assessed through testimony alone.
Common Confusion
Visores should not be confused with modern "viewers" appointed in eminent domain or partition proceedings, though the functional concept — a court-delegated body conducting physical inspection and reporting back — is analogous. The medieval visor had no decision-making authority over the merits of the case; the role was purely investigative and diagnostic, confined to verifying the physical condition of an essoining party or performing a defined inspection task. The modern viewer, by contrast, often renders a finding with quasi-adjudicative effect.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering visores in historical English legal records should understand the procedural context in which the term appears. The essoin de malo lecti was a formal excuse for non-appearance, and the appointment of visores was the court's mechanism for preventing its abuse. Without understanding this procedural chain — essoin, appointment of visores, their report, and the subsequent procedural consequences — a record mentioning visores may appear opaque or unconnected to its surrounding documents.
The dual function noted by Burrill (viewers of the essoining party versus jurors in certain actions) means the term does not always signify the same procedural moment. A researcher must examine context: is the reference tied to an essoin proceeding, or to a fact-finding function closer to jury service? Fleta's usage in the jury sense suggests the word had some flexibility in medieval practice.
This term is essentially obsolete and will appear only in pre-modern English legal records, Bracton, Fleta, and their commentators. It does not survive in any modern procedural system. Researchers working with plea rolls, eyre records, or common law treatises from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries are the primary audience likely to encounter it.
Because the term appears in Latin and Law French simultaneously in the sources, searchers in manuscript or early printed sources should be prepared for vejours as the Law French equivalent and should not treat the two forms as different offices.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal English-language legal dictionary to define visores with any precision. Burrill correctly identifies the dual function and grounds both usages in authoritative medieval sources — Bracton (De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, fol. 354, 361) and Fleta (lib. 4, c. 6, § 1) — giving the entry solid primary-source backing.
The entry is appropriately spare. Burrill makes no attempt to extend the term beyond its medieval procedural context, and there is nothing to suggest the term had any currency in the period when the major historical dictionaries were compiled. Terms and Phrases Judaica and comparable compilations do not appear to add to Burrill's account. The historical dictionary record for visores is effectively monolinear: the sources agree, and there is no significant divergence to flag. What the historical dictionaries collectively leave underdeveloped is the procedural mechanics surrounding the appointment — who appointed the visores, what their report triggered, and how the court acted on their findings — for which Bracton itself remains the indispensable source.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Medieval English Civil Procedure
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Essoin
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Early Common Law Courts