Definition
An archaic legal term meaning satisfaction rendered for an offense committed or injury done. The term functioned as a noun denoting the act or state of making good a wrong — the giving of amends sufficient to discharge the obligation arising from a transgression or harm.
GREE appears almost exclusively in historical legal sources and obsolete forms of pleading or dispute resolution. Its practical scope overlaps with what modern law treats under the concepts of satisfaction, accord and satisfaction, and amends. The term had particular relevance in early English law where private settlement of wrongs — making "gree" to an injured party — could forestall or resolve criminal or civil proceedings.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To agree.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Good will, favor, pleasure, or satisfaction — used in phrases such as "to take in gree" (to accept favorably). Also: rank, degree, or position; and the prize or honor of a contest (to "bear the gree"). All senses marked obsolete or dialectal Scots.
The gap between common and legal meaning here runs in two directions. The legal term is a noun (a state of satisfaction rendered), while the surviving common usage is verbal (to agree). The Webster's 1913 senses — goodwill, acceptance, degree, honor — are adjacent to the legal meaning but not identical to it. A researcher encountering "gree" in a historical document must determine whether it signals a formal legal concept (satisfaction for a wrong) or one of the several colloquial senses the word carried in Middle and Early Modern English.
Common Confusion
GREE vs. GRACE: In early legal and ecclesiastical usage, grace and gree could appear in overlapping contexts involving forgiveness or release from obligation. Grace emphasizes the unilateral grant of favor; gree emphasizes the satisfaction rendered by the wrongdoer. The two should not be read as synonyms.
GREE vs. AGREEMENT: The etymological proximity to "agree" has caused occasional misreading of historical texts. Where a document states that a party made "gree," this does not mean merely that the parties agreed — it means specifically that amends or satisfaction were provided for a wrong.
Why It Matters in Research
GREE is a term a researcher will encounter only in older materials — medieval and early modern English legal records, historical treatises, and Scots law documents. It does not appear in modern statutory or case law in active use. Several practical traps attend research into sources where gree appears:
First, the term's range of meaning in ordinary Middle English (goodwill, degree, prize) means that context is decisive. A legal occurrence of "gree" in a plea roll or settlement instrument has a precise meaning that differs from the same word in a literary or narrative source from the same period.
Second, because all three historical dictionary sources trace the legal definition back to Cowell's Interpreter (John Cowell, 1607), the legal usage is traceable to a single early lexicographic authority. Researchers should be aware that Cowell's Interpreter itself was controversial — it was condemned by Parliament in 1610 for certain of its definitions. The gree entry is not among the contested passages, but the lineage matters for evaluating the weight of the source.
Third, gree surfaces with some frequency in Scots legal usage and in border law contexts, where private satisfaction for wrongs (including homicide) had recognized procedural standing longer than in English common law. Researchers working in Scottish legal history or Anglo-Scottish border materials should treat gree as a live operative term in those sources rather than mere archaism.
Fourth, the concept gree denotes — private satisfaction for a wrong as a legally cognizable act — connects directly to the history of accord and satisfaction, to early criminal law's tolerance of composition (private settlement of crimes), and to the later displacement of those practices by state prosecution. Researchers tracing the doctrinal evolution of satisfaction as a legal concept will find gree a useful entry point into the earlier vocabulary.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st Ed.), Black's (2nd Ed.), and Bouvier's — give identical or near-identical one-line definitions: satisfaction for an offense committed or injury done. All three cite Cowell as the authority, without elaboration or example. This convergence reflects the term's status as a historical curiosity preserved in legal dictionaries rather than a living term requiring substantive analysis.
No source dictionary provides examples from case law, statutory usage, or pleading forms. The unanimity of the definition across sources is less a sign of robust legal consensus than of successive copying from Cowell through the legal lexicographic tradition. Researchers should not treat the multiple dictionary entries as independent corroboration — they trace to a single root source.
Webster's 1913 adds useful context the legal dictionaries omit: the Middle English semantic range of the word was considerably broader than the legal dictionaries suggest, and the sense of "satisfaction" was only one register of meaning the word carried. This background enriches rather than contradicts the legal definition.
Jurisdictional Note
GREE has no meaningful presence in American law and appears in English law only in historical sources predating the systematization of the common law. Its most sustained operative use is in Scottish legal history, where private composition for serious wrongs persisted as a recognized practice. Researchers working in English legal materials should treat the term as obsolete by the early modern period; researchers in Scots law should assess currency on a source-by-source basis.