Definition
An obsolete spelling variant of EMBRACERY. Imbracery denotes the common law offense of attempting to corruptly influence a juror — through bribery, threats, promises, entreaties, or other improper means — outside the course of legal proceedings. The term itself carries no independent legal content distinct from embracery; all substantive doctrine is found under that heading.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete form of embracery.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Embracery. [Obs.]
The term has no life in ordinary English usage. It appears in older legal texts solely as an alternate spelling and should be treated as a bibliographic artifact rather than a term of art in its own right.
Common Confusion
Researchers encountering imbracery in historical sources may treat it as a distinct offense or a narrower subcategory of embracery. It is neither. The variation reflects orthographic inconsistency common in pre-standardization legal writing, not a doctrinal distinction. Similarly, Rapalje & Lawrence's entry pairs a cross-reference to embracery with a separate entry for IMBROCUS (a brook or water passage) — an unrelated term that shares only typographic proximity on the page. Do not conflate these.
Why It Matters in Research
Pattern: Historical evolution / spelling variant — navigate accordingly.
The primary research value of this entry is negative: knowing that imbracery adds nothing substantive saves time. If a historical source — a case report, a pleading, an indictment — uses the spelling imbracery, the researcher should translate directly to embracery and pursue doctrine under that head.
Orthographic variation was endemic in English legal sources through at least the eighteenth century. Embracery itself appears in older texts as embracerie, imbrasery, imbracery, and other forms. Indexes and finding aids in historical reporters may not consolidate these variants. When searching digitized corpus materials for jury-tampering offenses, running searches on multiple spellings — including imbracery — is necessary for complete retrieval.
Nothing in the historical dictionaries suggests that imbracery was ever used to describe a jurisdictional subset, a procedural variant, or a lesser included offense. All four source dictionaries treat it as a pure cross-reference with no independent entry.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Bouvier's, and Rapalje & Lawrence — resolve to "See EMBRACERY" without elaboration. This unanimity is itself informative: no historical authority treated imbracery as warranting independent definition. Rapalje & Lawrence's physical page layout, which places the embracery cross-reference adjacent to the unrelated IMBROCUS entry, is a reminder that proximity in a dictionary is not doctrinal connection. Webster's 1913 confirms the term was already considered obsolete in general usage by the late nineteenth century.
No historical dictionary assigns imbracery any meaning, element, or application that diverges from embracery.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: EMBRACERY — for the full doctrinal treatment of the underlying offense, its elements, historical prosecution, and relationship to modern jury-tampering statutes.