Category: P

In old English and Scotch law. Dusty-foot. A term applied to itinerant merchants, chapmen, or peddlers who attended fairs.

A pilch or surplice. Spelman.

An English coin, being the twelfth part of a shilling. It was also used in America during the colonial period.

Lat. In old English law. By ring and staff, or crozier. The symbolical mode of conferring an ecclesiastical investure. 1 Bl. Comm. 3 78, 370.

Lat. By threats. See DURESS.

Lat In old English law. By the living voice; the same with viva voce. Bract fol. 95.

Imperative; absolute; not admitting of question, delay, or recon PEREMPTORY 892 PERIL sideration. Positive; final; decisive; not admitting of any alternative. Self-determined ; arbitrary; not requiring any cause to be shown.

Fixed, enduring, abiding, not subject to change. Generally opposed in law to “temporary.”

Purchase. Acquisition by one’s own act or agreement, and not by descent.

In Spanish law. The claim or right which one has to the property in anything; the territory which belongs to any one by way of jurisdiction or property; that which is accessory

One who presents a petition to a court, officer, or legislative body. In legal proceedings begun by petition, the person against whom action or relief is prayed, or who opposes the prayer

An instrument by which locks are opened without a key.

One who steals petty things.

A technical word which must always be used in an indictment for piracy. 3 Inst. 112.

In old records. A pleader. Cowell; Spelman.

Debt contracted by gaming.

In the law of bailment. A bailment of goods to a creditor as security for some debt or engagement. A bailment or delivery of goods by a debtor to his creditor, to

A kind of earnest used In public sales at Amsterdam. Wharton.

In Roman law. A phrase denoting the offense of claiming more than was just in one’s pleadings. This more might be claimed in four different respects, viz.: (1) Re, i. e., in

The form of government; civil constitution.