"Amercement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... N. penalty; retribution &c (punishment) 972; pain, pains and penalties; weregild^, wergild; peine forte et dure [Fr.]; penance &c (atonement) 952; the devil to pay. fine, mulct, amercement; forfeit, forfeiture; escheat [Law], damages, deodand^, sequestration, confiscation, premunire [Lat.]; doomage [U.S.]. V. fine, mulct, amerce, sconce, confiscate; sequestrate, sequester; escheat [Law]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was, in the words of Bishop Barnes addressed to the churchwardens in Durham diocese, the "paynes of interdiction and suspencion [i.e., temporary excommunication] to be pronounced against themselves."[33] Yet here, too, the wardens did not escape indirect amercement, for absolution from interdiction or excommunication often meant a payment of various court fees, which in many cases were by no means light. These fines the wardens put to their credit in the expense items of their accounts if ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... from Lat. merces, pay), in English law, an arbitrary pecuniary penalty, inflicted in old days on an offender by the peers or equals of the party amerced. The word has in modern times become practically a poetical synonym for fine or deprivation. But an amercement differed from a fixed fine, prescribed by statute, by reason of its arbitrary nature; it represented a commutation of a sentence of forfeiture of goods, while a fine was originally a composition agreed upon between the judge and the prisoner ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia |
