Definition
An embraceor is a person who commits embracery — the common law offense of corruptly attempting to influence a juror. Specifically, an embraceor is one who, while a matter is on trial, approaches the court with one of the parties, having received some reward or inducement, and either speaks in the cause, privately solicits or instructs jurors, or stands near them in a manner calculated to cause fear or partiality. The term describes the actor, not the act; the offense itself is embracery.
Persons learned in the law appearing on behalf of clients were expressly excluded from the definition, even under the earliest formulations.
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Common Confusion
EMBRACEOR vs. EMBRACERY: The two terms are frequently conflated but describe different things. Embraceor is the person; embracery is the offense. Some historical sources use the terms interchangeably when referring to the conduct, but precise usage reserves embraceor for the offending party and embracery for the criminal act itself. Researchers encountering one term should cross-reference both, as older texts sometimes index the offense exclusively under one heading.
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Why It Matters in Research
Embraceor is an archaic common law term with a narrow, stable meaning — it did not evolve significantly across the common law period — but several research traps exist.
First, spelling variation is significant in historical sources. The term appears as embraceor, embracor, embrasour (Law French), and imbraciator (Law Latin). Full-text searches in historical corpus sources should account for all variants; a search limited to the modern spelling will miss a substantial portion of pre-nineteenth-century appearances.
Second, the Bouvier's entry in the Law Mind corpus includes a misplaced passage about emblements (a completely unrelated agricultural tenancy doctrine) immediately preceding the embraceor entry. This is a typographical artifact of dictionary formatting, not a substantive connection. Researchers working from raw corpus text should be alert to this bleed-over and not read any doctrinal relationship between the two entries.
Third, the statutory anchor matters for historical research. Burrill's traces the operative definition to 19 Hen. VII, c. 13. Researchers examining English common law sources should anchor their analysis to that statute as the baseline definition, since many dictionary entries — including Black's and Bouvier's — trace their language directly back to it, often via Coke's Littleton (Co. Litt. 369).
Fourth, modern American law has absorbed this offense into broader jury tampering and obstruction statutes. A researcher tracing a modern jury-tampering doctrine back through history will encounter embraceor/embracery as the common law predecessor, but the doctrinal architecture is now entirely statutory. Do not assume that elements of the common law offense map cleanly onto modern federal or state jury tampering provisions.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources in the Law Mind corpus agree closely on substance. Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill's all converge on the same core definition, tracing to Co. Litt. 369 and the statute 19 Hen. VII, c. 13. The agreement across sources is unusually tight for a common law term, likely because all are drawing from the same narrow lineage of authority.
Burrill's offers the most complete treatment, supplying the Law French (embrasour) and Law Latin (imbraciator) forms alongside the substantive definition, and explicitly characterizing the embraceor as one who "labors a jury, or instructs them, or puts them in fear." This tripartite formulation — corrupt instruction, private solicitation, and intimidation — captures the full behavioral scope of the offense better than the shorter entries in Black's.
None of the historical sources address what conduct fell short of the offense, or the evidentiary difficulties in proving the corrupt inducement element. Researchers should treat the historical dictionary entries as definitional anchors only and look to treatise and case law sources for doctrine at the margins.
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Jurisdictional Note
Embraceor and embracery were recognized across common law jurisdictions in England and the American states, but the offense is now largely superseded by statutory jury tampering provisions that vary by jurisdiction. Researchers should confirm whether a given jurisdiction ever codified the common law offense or simply absorbed it into later obstruction statutes.
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