Definition
In old English law, the delivery at evening or nightfall of a portion of grass, corn, or other agricultural produce to a customary tenant as compensation for services rendered to the lord of the manor. The tenant typically earned this allotment by performing agricultural labor — cutting, mowing, or reaping — on the lord's land. The term describes both the practice of this end-of-day payment in kind and the portion itself that was delivered.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of evening; the periods of time at the end of the day, from late afternoon through nightfall.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The latter part and close of the day, and the beginning of darkness or night; the time from sunset, or the close of the day's work, to bedtime.
The legal meaning of EVENINGS is not merely a time of day but a term of art describing a feudal form of compensation in kind. A researcher encountering the word in a historical English legal document should not read it as a simple time reference; it may instead denote a specific customary right or obligation tied to manorial land tenure.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in sources dealing with English feudal and manorial law, particularly records relating to customary tenants, copyhold tenure, and labor services owed to lords of the manor. Researchers working in pre-modern English legal materials — court rolls, manorial surveys, abstracts of title, or treatises on copyhold — may encounter EVENINGS as a technical term without any signal that it carries legal weight beyond its ordinary meaning.
The primary trap is misreading the term as a mere time reference when it in fact describes a compensatory right. In abstracts and conveyancing documents of the period, specialized abbreviations and compressed language are common, which increases the risk of misidentification.
The term belongs to a cluster of archaic agricultural and manorial concepts that largely disappeared from active legal use following the gradual abolition of copyhold tenure in England, completed by the Law of Property Act 1922. Researchers should treat EVENINGS as a historical artifact of manorial practice rather than a living legal concept. It has no recognized counterpart in American law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both the first and second editions of Black's Law Dictionary provide nearly identical definitions, confirming stability in the term's understood meaning across editions. Black's frames the term within old English law and ties it specifically to customary tenancy and manual agricultural service — mowing, cutting, reaping — performed for the lord. The compensation delivered at evening was in kind (grass, corn, or similar produce) rather than monetary.
Neither edition elaborates on the legal consequences of withholding or disputing an evening, nor do they situate the term within a broader taxonomy of manorial rights or customary dues. Researchers needing deeper treatment should consult primary sources on copyhold and manorial tenure, such as Scriven's Treatise on the Law of Copyholds or Coke's writings on customary tenures, rather than relying on dictionary definitions alone.
The second edition entry appears in proximity to the Latin abbreviation "et ux." (et uxor), suggesting the term was included in a compressed alphabetical sequence — a reminder that historical legal dictionaries were not always rigorously separated entries and that context within the source matters.
Jurisdictional Note
EVENINGS as a legal term is exclusively a feature of English manorial and customary law. It has no equivalent in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. Researchers in comparative or colonial land law contexts should note that while manorial practices influenced early colonial land grants in some regions, this specific term did not migrate into American legal usage.