St. 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, Ch 8, uses the terms, "fines, forfeitures, and amerciaments" five times. (1555)
St. 5 Elizabeth, Ch. 13, Sec. 10, uses the terms "fines, forfeitures, and amerciaments."
That amercements were fines, or pecuniary punishments, inflicted for offences, is proved by the following statutes, (all supposed to have been passed within one hundred and fifteen years after Magna Cart,) which speak of amercements as a species of "judgment," or punishment, and as being inflicted for the same offences as other "judgments."
Thus one statute declares that a baker, for default in the weight of his bread, "ought to be amerced, or suffer the judgment of the pillory; and that a brewer, for "selling ale contrary to the assize," "ought to be amerced, or suffer the judgment of the tumbrel," — 51 Henry III., St. 6. (1266)
Among the "Statutes of Uncertain Date," but supposed to be prior to Edward III., (1326), are the following:
Chap. 6 provides that "if a brewer break the assize, (fixing the price of ale,) the first, second, and third time, he shall be amerced; but the fourth time he shall suffer judgment of the pillory without redemption."
Chap. 7 provides that "a butcher that selleth swine's flesh measeled, or flesh dead of the murrain, or that buyeth flesh of Jews, and selleth the same unto Christians, after he shall be convict thereof, for the first time he shall be grievously amerced; the second time he shall suffer judgment of the pillory; and the third time he shall be imprisoned and make fine; and the fourth time he shall forswear the town."
Chap. 10, a statute against forestalling, provides that, "He that is convict thereof, the first time shall be amerced, and shall lose the thing so bought, and that according to the custom of the town; he that is convicted the second time shall have judgment of the pillory; at the third time he shall be imprisoned and make fine; the fourth time he shall abjure the town. And this judgment shall be given upon all manner of forestallers, and likewise upon them that have given them counsel, help, or favor." 1 Ruffheads Statutes, 187, 188. 1 Statutes of the Realm, 203.
[26] 1 Hume, Appendix, l.
[27] Blackstone says, "Our ancient Saxon laws nominally punished theft with death, if above the value of twelve pence; but the criminal was permitted to redeem his life by a pecuniary ransom, as among their ancestors, the Germans, by a stated number of cattle. Bit in the ninth year of Henry the First (1109,) this power of redemption was taken away, and all persons guilty of larceny above the value off twelve pence were directed to be hanged, which law continues in force to this day." 4 Blackstone, 238