[f. EXCISE sb. + MAN.] An officer employed to collect excise duties and prevent infringement of the excise laws.
1647. S. Sheppard (title), The Committee Man curried … A Comedy … discovering the Corruption of Committee Men and Excisemen.
1681. Prideaux, Lett. (Camden), 107. The mayor haveing unreasonably taken many licences for ale houses without a legal cause, the excisemen came and complained to the Vice-Chancellor of it.
a. 1704. T. Brown, Table T., Poems 133. A broken Shopkeeper, ends in an Exciseman.
1789. J. Pilkington, View Derbyshire, I. 405. Mathematical rulers and excisemen’s gauging sticks.
1828. Carlyle, Crit. & Misc. Ess., Burns, Wks. VII. 67. To-morrow he must go drudge as an exciseman.
1863. Fawcett, Pol. Econ., IV. iii. 557. The exciseman can of course visit the malt-house whenever he pleases.
Hence Excisemanship, the office of exciseman.
1828. Lockhart, Life Burns, viii. 244 (F. Hall). Fathers who have more leisure than his excisemanship left him.
1855. Eclectic Rev., May, 522. No … free and independent elector, hungry for an excisemanship, could exceed her ladyship’s admiration for place and the pension list.
