amercement
Sign in to saveAn amercement is a financial penalty in English law, common during the Middle Ages, imposed either by the court or by peers.
~20 min read
Encyclopedic overview
22 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- History
- Early Norman rule
- Magna Carta
- Amercement of freemen
- Amercement of villeins
- Amercement of merchants
- Later Plantagenet rule
- Modern usage
- In the United States
- In Canada
- Alberta
- Ontario
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- Saskatchewan
- Nova Scotia
- Canadian jurisprudence
- See also
- Notes
- References
- External links
An amercement is a financial penalty in English law, common during the Middle Ages, imposed either by the court or by peers.
While it is often synonymous with a fine, it differs in that a fine is a fixed sum prescribed by statute and was often voluntary, while an amercement is arbitrary. Amercements were commonly used as a punishment for minor offences (such as trespassing in the king's forest), as an alternative to imprisonment.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “amercement” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.