Essoine (Essoin)

Essoine: The right to trial by combat through the services of a champion to fight in the accused place. A brief search of the Internet seems to indicate that this word only survives in Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Essoin is a term in English Law that means an excuse not to appear.

Here standeth the good knight, Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, ready to do battle with any knight of free blood who will sustain the quarrel allowed and alloted to the Jewess Rebecca, to try by champion, in respect of lawful essoine of her own body.

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