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Let them, for methods' sake, be reduced to the heads following: Amercements for or by reason of murders and manslaughters, for misdemeanors, for disseisins, for recreancy, for breach of assize, for defaults, for non-appearance, for false judgment, and for not making suit, or hue and cry.
The statutes are very numerous, running through the three or four hundred years immediately succeeding Magna Carta, in which fines, ransoms, and amercements are spoken of as if they were the common punishments of offences, and as if they all meant the same thing.
The fines and amercements were another branch, and this, at a time when disorders abounded, and almost every disorder was punished by a fine, was a much greater article than at first could readily be imagined, especially when we consider that there were no limitations in this point but the king's mercy, particularly in all offences relating to the forest, which were of various kinds, and very strictly inquired into.
A freeman shall not be amerced for a slight offense, except in accordance with the degree of the offense; and for a grave offense he shall be amerced in accordance with the gravity of the offense, yet saving always his "contentment;" and a merchant in the same way, saving his "merchandise;" and a villein shall be amerced in the same way, saving his "wainage" if they have fallen into our mercy: and none of the aforesaid amercements shall be impsed except by the oath of honest men of the neighborhood.
On the one hand, they were the ordinary civil judges for sales concluded in open market, for the cattle and slave markets in particular; and on the other hand, they ordinarily acted in processes of fines and amercements as judges of first instance or which was in Roman law the same thing as public prosecutors.
The headborough is only an assistant to the constables, chiefly in time of absence. High tasters examine the goodness of beer, and its measure. Low tasters inspect the meat exposed to sale, and cause that to be destroyed which is unfit for use. Asseirers ratify the chief rent and amercements, between the lord and the inhabitant. And the
There were other provisions made in the Great Charter, that went deeper than the feudal tenure, and affected the whole body of the civil government. A great part of the king's revenue then consisted in the fines and amercements, which were imposed in his courts. A fine was paid there for liberty to commence, or to conclude a suit.
On the one hand, they were the ordinary civil judges for sales concluded in open market, for the cattle and slave markets in particular; and on the other hand, they ordinarily acted in processes of fines and amercements as judges of first instance or which was in Roman law the same thing as public prosecutors.
We also know that, by Magna Carta, amercements, or fines, could not be imposed to the ruin of the criminal; that, in the case of a freeman, his contenement, or means of subsisting in the condition of a freeman, must be saved to him; that, in the case of a merchant, his merchandise must be spared; and in the case of a villein, his waynage, or plough-tackle and carts.
The provision, also, in the 64th chapter of Magna Carta, that " all unjust and illegal fines, and all amercements, imposed unjustly, and contrary to the Law of the Land, shall be entirely forgiven," &c;.; and the provision, in chapter 61, that the king "will cause full justice to be administered" in regard to "all those things, of which any person has, without legal judgment of his peers, been dispossessed or deprived, either by King Henry, our father., or our brother, King Richard," indicate the tyrannical practices that prevailed.
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