escuage

plural escuages

1. Middle AgescountablehistoricaluncountablePayment to a lord in lieu of military service.

   1866, Land Tax, entry in William Thomas Brande, George William Cox (editors), A Dictionary of Science, Literature, & Art, Volume 2, page 308, These escuages were virtually a very heavy land tax […]

   3 more examples

   […] subsidies were not to be granted, nor levied in this case ; that is, for wars of Scotland : for that the law had provided another course, by service of escuage, for those journeys […]

   1622, Francis Bacon, Bacon's History of the Reign of King Henry VII, Cambridge University Press, published 1902, page 148

   1829, George Crabb, History of English Law, 1831 American Edition, page 374, When the escuage which was to be paid was uncertain, being more or less according to the pleasure of the king or the assessment of parliament ; then the tenure by escuage was a sort of knight′s service.

   And the cause why this service is called grand serjeanty is, for that it is a greater and more worthy service than the service in the tenure of escuage.

   1841, William Rastell, transl., edited by Thomas de Littleton Sir Thomas Edlyne Tomlins, Lyttleton, His Treatise of Tenures: In French and English, page 188