Definition
In Scots feudal law, the double avail of marriage was a financial penalty imposed on a vassal who refused a suitable marriage partner offered by the feudal superior. The penalty was set at twice the ordinary or single value of the marriage — that is, double what the superior would have received had the vassal accepted the proposed match. In practice, this was modified over time to the equivalent of three years' rent of the vassal's free estate.
The concept rested on the feudal superior's recognized right to control the marriages of vassals holding land by certain tenures. When a vassal declined a proposed spouse deemed equal in station, the superior was entitled to this doubled payment as compensation for the lost value of the marriage arrangement.
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Common Confusion
The term is easily confused with the single or ordinary "avail of marriage" — the standard payment due the superior for consent to a vassal's marriage. The double avail was specifically the penalty form: it arose not from the marriage itself, but from the vassal's refusal of the superior's offered match. Researchers encountering either term in historical Scots sources should confirm whether a refusal is in play, or simply a standard marriage transaction requiring consent.
The entry in Bouvier's redirects entirely to DUPLEX VALOR MARITAGII, the Latin equivalent, which may appear in medieval and early modern sources alongside or instead of the English form.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is a narrow relic of Scots feudal tenure law and appears almost exclusively in historical sources. Researchers are unlikely to encounter it in any living legal context. Its importance is archival: it surfaces in records involving feudal land rights, superior-vassal disputes, and the administration of heritable property in Scotland prior to the abolition of feudal tenure.
Key navigational points:
The Latin equivalent DUPLEX VALOR MARITAGII is the form most likely to appear in older Latin-language charters, court records, and treatises. Bouvier routes directly there, and researchers working with pre-modern Scots or Anglo-Norman sources should search both forms.
The measurement standard shifted over time. Early formulations fixed the penalty at double the marriage value in the abstract; later practice settled on three years' rent of the vassal's free estate as a more calculable substitute. A source's period of composition may determine which measure applies.
The term belongs to a cluster of feudal marriage-related obligations — including the single avail, relief, and wardship — that operated together as mechanisms of feudal control over land and succession. Understanding double avail requires familiarity with that broader system; treating it in isolation will produce incomplete analysis.
Scots feudal law diverges significantly from English feudal tenure, and English common law sources are largely unhelpful here. Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland is the primary authority cited across all four source dictionaries and remains the appropriate starting point for deeper research.
The term does not appear in connection with Louisiana civil law, despite Black's including a stray reference to extradotal property and Louisiana Civil Code Article 2335 in the same block of text. That material belongs to a separate entry and is almost certainly a typographical or layout artifact of the original printing.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries treat this term as a Scots law entry, and there is no meaningful divergence on its core definition: double the ordinary value of a marriage, imposed as a penalty for refusal of the superior's offered match.
Black's and Burrill's are nearly identical in their brief formulations, both citing Bell's Dictionary as authority and cross-referencing the Latin equivalent. Neither elaborates on the mechanism or history of the penalty.
Rapalje & Lawrence provides the most substantive entry, adding the important practical detail that the penalty was modified to three years' rent of the vassal's free estate — a refinement absent from Black's and Burrill's. This modification reflects the difficulty of calculating an abstract "value of marriage" and represents a later, more administrable standard. Researchers relying solely on Black's or Burrill's will miss this evolution.
Bouvier's offers no independent analysis, redirecting entirely to DUPLEX VALOR MARITAGII. This cross-reference is useful as a search term pointer but contributes nothing to understanding the substance of the concept.
None of the four dictionaries addresses when the right was formally extinguished under Scots law, nor do they situate the term within the broader abolition of feudal tenure in Scotland. That history requires consulting sources beyond the standard law dictionary shelf.
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Jurisdictional Note
This concept is specific to Scots feudal law and has no direct English common law equivalent, though analogous feudal marriage incidents existed in English tenure. It has no relevance to American law. The stray Louisiana reference appearing in Black's is a printing artifact and should be disregarded.
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