AMERCEMENT, or AMERCIAMENT (derived, through the Fr. (I merci, from

See also:

• LAT

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 de-privation . 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 to avoid imprisonment . The fixing or assessment of an ,amercement was termed an afeerment . In the lower courts the amercement was offered by a jury of the offender's neighbours (affeerors); in the superior courts by the coroner, except in the case of officers of the court, when the amount was affeered by the judges themselves . All judgments were entered on the court roll as "in mercy" (sit in misericordia), and the word misericordia, or some contracted form of it, was written on the margin . Articles twenty to twenty-two of Magna Carta regulated the assessment of amercements, See Stephen, History of Criminal Law; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law; W . S . McKechnie, Magna Carta (19os) .