Definition
Arles is an archaic legal term for earnest money — a sum paid by a buyer to a seller at the time of entering into a contract, serving as a token of the bargain and binding the agreement. The payment functioned as both a symbol of the parties' mutual commitment and, in some uses, as partial performance of the underlying transaction.
The term appears principally in two geographic-legal contexts: (1) Scottish law, where arles denoted money or other thing given by a buyer to a seller as a symbol of a concluded bargain; and (2) northern English usage, particularly Yorkshire, where it appeared in the compound form arles-penny. In Scottish usage, arles also extended to payments made to servants upon hiring, signifying the formation of a contract of service.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Arles is recognized primarily as the name of a city in Bouches-du-Rhône, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "An earnest; earnest money; money paid to bind a bargain. [Scot.] Arles penny, earnest money given to servants."
The gap here is complete: in modern general usage, arles has been wholly displaced by the French city of the same name and retains no living commercial or legal currency in English. A researcher encountering arles in a historical legal document should not read it geographically — it is a contract-formation term, not a place reference.
Common Confusion
Arles is sometimes loosely treated as synonymous with earnest or earnest money in general contract law, but the terms are not fully interchangeable across all historical sources. Earnest is the broader English-law concept with roots in both common law and civil law traditions. Arles is the specifically Scottish and northern English localism for the same institution. Burrill's entry is the most careful, limiting arles expressly to Scotch law. Researchers should resist importing the full doctrinal weight of earnest-money doctrine from English common law sources into Scottish legal contexts where arles appears — the underlying legal effect may differ in detail, particularly regarding forfeiture and enforceability.
Why It Matters in Research
Arles is a term that can easily be missed or misread. Its primary research significance is geographic and jurisdictional: the term signals Scottish law or northern English (Yorkshire) practice. Encountering arles in a historical document is an immediate indicator that the researcher is working in one of those two legal traditions and should consult Scottish legal sources — Forbes' Institutes, Bell's Dictionary, or analogous Scottish institutional writers — rather than English common law treatises.
The compound form arles-penny appears in Yorkshire records and should be distinguished from the Scottish standalone usage. Both Cowell's Interpreter and Bell's Dictionary are the cited authorities across the historical dictionaries; researchers tracing this term should go to those sources directly.
Because arles in Scottish practice extended to service contracts (payment to a hired servant as binding of employment), it appears not only in commercial transaction records but also in labor and domestic service contexts. A researcher working with Scottish household accounts, burgh records, or early employment disputes may encounter arles in that distinct application.
The term has no living usage in modern legal drafting. Its appearance in any contemporary document would be an archaism or a direct quotation from historical sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are closely aligned, with one meaningful distinction. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier agree almost verbatim, citing Cowell for the Yorkshire usage and Bell for the Scottish equivalence — but neither develops the legal mechanics of arles in any depth. Burrill is the outlier in a useful direction: his entry expressly frames arles within Scotch law and adds the substantive detail that the payment could be money or other thing given as a symbol of the bargain, citing Forbes' Institutes directly. This makes Burrill the most legally informative of the four entries.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is any discussion of the consequences of arles — whether it was forfeited upon breach, whether it operated as part payment, or how Scottish courts treated its legal effect relative to the underlying contract. Researchers needing that doctrinal depth must go to the Scottish institutional writers (Forbes, Erskine, Bell) rather than any of the English-tradition legal dictionaries.
Webster's 1913 corroborates the legal dictionaries on substance while confirming that arles was already marked as distinctly Scottish ([Scot.]) in general English usage by the late nineteenth century.
Jurisdictional Note
Arles is a term of Scottish law and northern English (Yorkshire) regional practice. It has no recognized place in general English common law doctrine or American law. Researchers working in Scottish legal history, burgh court records, or early modern English regional practice are the primary audience for this term.