"Amercement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... to the grower, but burnt—a despairing sacrifice to the toiler! The Cabezas de Barangay (vide p. 223) had, under penalty of arrest and hard labour, to see that the families fulfilled their onerous contract. Corporal punishment, imprisonment, and amercement resulted; of frequent occurrence were those fearful scenes which culminated in riots such as those of Ilocos in 1807 and 1814, when many Spaniards fell victims to the natives' resentment ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... free from animosities of the time, it is impossible not to see that, though gravely unconstitutional, it was at most an infringement of civil liberty only, not of personal liberty. There was an unjust tax of a few pence, with the chance of amercement by a single judge without a jury; but by no provision of this act was the personal liberty of any man assailed. No freeman could be seized under it as a slave. Such an act, though justly obnoxious to every lover of constitutional Liberty, cannot be viewed with the feelings of repugnance ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... 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
... 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 |
