Definition
In old Scots law, to clear or acquit a person of a criminal charge. The term carries the literal sense of cleansing or purification — to cleanse one of an accusation. It appeared in historical Scots legal procedure as a verb describing the formal exoneration of an accused person following trial or other prescribed process.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not recorded as a current English word.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not recorded.
Editorial note: The term has no surviving common English counterpart. Its root meaning — to cleanse — belongs to an older stratum of Scots and Northern English vocabulary that has since dropped out of ordinary use entirely. Researchers should not attempt to interpret the word through modern English without reference to its specialized procedural context.
Why It Matters in Research
CLENGE is an archival term. No researcher will encounter it in modern legal proceedings or contemporary statutes. Its value is entirely historical: it appears in sources treating early Scots criminal procedure, particularly in connection with the assise (the Scots assize), and understanding it requires recognizing that Scots law developed a distinct vocabulary for criminal process that diverged from English common law usage.
Key navigational points:
First, the term marks a broader pattern in old Scots law of importing quasi-sacramental language into legal process — acquittal framed as purification. Researchers working in Scots criminal history should be alert to this conceptual framework, which shapes the vocabulary of sources well into the early modern period.
Second, the term is exclusively historical. It will not appear in post-Union Scottish legal materials in active use, and it plays no role in modern Scots law or in any common law jurisdiction. If a source uses CLENGE in a live procedural context, treat that as a signal the document is either very old or is quoting from an archaic authority.
Third, the assise connection noted in Burrill — citing Skene's De Verborum Significatione — is significant. Sir John Skene's glossary (published 1597) is the primary early authority for old Scots legal terminology. Any researcher needing deeper context for CLENGE should go directly to Skene, which remains the foundational reference for this vocabulary. The historical dictionaries uniformly trace back to this source, directly or indirectly.
Fourth, there is nothing jurisdiction-ambiguous about this term: it is Scots, it is old, and it is defunct. Unlike some archaic terms that migrated into American or English law, CLENGE did not travel.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, and Burrill's — are in full agreement: CLENGE means to clear or acquit of a criminal charge in old Scots law, and its literal sense is to cleanse or clean. There is no divergence among the sources on substance.
Burrill adds the most scholarly texture, supplying the Latin equivalent (mundare) and the specific citation to Skene's De Verborum Significatione under the heading Assisa. This is the only entry among the four that grounds the term in a primary source rather than simply relaying the definition. Black's first edition adds the phrase "In old Scotch F" — an apparent truncation in the source text, almost certainly cutting off a longer note — but the substantive content is consistent with the other entries.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: none of them situate CLENGE within the broader procedural mechanics of early Scots criminal law, explain under what circumstances clenging occurred, or describe what distinguished it from other forms of discharge or acquittal. Researchers needing procedural context will need to consult Skene directly or works on historical Scots criminal procedure.