Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In England— The seat or court of the marshal of the royal household.
  • noun [capitalized] A prison in Southwark. London, under the jurisdiction of the marshal of the royal household.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun engraving The court or seat of a marshal; hence, the prison in Southwark, belonging to the marshal of the king's household.
  • noun a court formerly held before the steward and marshal of the king's house to administer justice between the king's domestic servants.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun UK The court or seat of a marshal.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

marshal + Old English word for "seat".

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word marshalsea.

Examples

  • The Jooks and the Kelly – Cooks have been milking turnkeys and sucking the blood out of the marshalsea since the act of First Offenders.

    Finnegans Wake 2006

  • So there you are now there they were, when all was over again, the four with them, setting around upin their judges’ chambers, in the muniment room, of their marshalsea, under the suspices of Lally, around their old traditional tables of the law like Somany Solans to talk it over rallthesameagain.

    Finnegans Wake 2006

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.