cessor

noun

1. In English law, one who is dilatory, negligent, and delinquent in his duty or service, and who thereby incurred the danger of the law, and was liable to have the writ of cessavit brought against him.

   “If there be lord and tenant, and the tenant take a wife, and afterwards cesseth, upon which the lord bringeth a cessavit, and recovers, and enters into the tenancy, and the tenant dies: it seems clear, that the wife shall have dower; for no laches or default can be deemed in the wife as to the cessor. But some say, the wife shall not have dower in this case, because the cessor does not lie in any act done by the husband; but it is his not doing...”

2. (obsolete)One who determined the amount of a cess; an assessor.

   “[Y]et some there be of that nature, that though they be in private men, yet their evil reacheth to a general hurt, as the extortion of sheriffs and their sub-sheriffs, and bayliffes, the corruption of victuallers, cessors, and purveyors, the disorders of seneschalls, captaines, and their souldiers, and many such like: […]”