Definition
Ley gager (Law French: "law wager") is an archaic common law procedure by which a defendant offered security — a gage or pledge — guaranteeing that he would appear on a specified future day to perform his law, meaning to formally deny the plaintiff's claim under oath and produce a required number of oath-helpers (compurgators) who would swear to the credibility of his denial. The act of completing this procedure was called "doing the law" or, in Law French, fesans de ley. Ley gager was the preliminary step; the full procedure, once completed, was known as wager of law (or compurgation).
Common Confusion
Ley gager and wager of law are related but distinct procedural stages, though historical sources and modern references often use them interchangeably. Ley gager refers specifically to the defendant's initial pledge or security that he will perform his law at a later date. Wager of law (or compurgation) refers to the completed procedure — the actual oath and the attestation of compurgators. Burrill draws this distinction explicitly. Bouvier collapses the two, treating ley gager as essentially synonymous with wager of law. Researchers encountering ley gager in historical pleading records should understand it as the offer and security stage, not the completed oath.
Why It Matters in Research
Ley gager appears in medieval and early modern English legal records as a formal pleading step, not merely a descriptive term. Researchers working in year books, early plea rolls, or treatises such as Littleton's Tenures will encounter the term in its procedural context, where it marks a specific moment in litigation — the defendant's commitment to later complete compurgation. The term disappears from active legal use following the abolition of wager of law in England by 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 43, § 16 (1833), so its appearance in primary sources is a reliable dating signal: sources using ley gager as a live procedural term predate that abolition.
The Law French form is important for corpus navigation. Variant spellings in historical sources include lei gager, ley gagier, and law-wager (anglicized). Researchers searching digitized year books or early reports should run multiple spelling variants. The related Law French term parfaire sa ley (to perfect one's law) appears in the same procedural cluster and signals the completion stage rather than the pledge stage.
The term has no American common law footprint of significance. Wager of law was never adopted in most American jurisdictions, and ley gager as a discrete procedural term is essentially absent from American legal sources. Researchers finding it in American texts will almost certainly be reading English sources or treatises describing historical English procedure.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: ley gager is the giving of security by a defendant that he will perform his law at a future day. Black's and Burrill align closely, both citing Littleton § 514 and Coke on Littleton 294b–295a as the authoritative sources, and both preserving the Law French framing. Burrill adds the complementary phrase parfaire sa ley, which is a useful navigational term for researchers pursuing the completion stage of the procedure.
Bouvier departs from this precision. He treats ley gager as equivalent to the full wager of law procedure rather than its preliminary stage, and he focuses on the oath and compurgators rather than the pledge. This conflation is editorially convenient but loses the procedural granularity that Littleton and Coke preserve. Bouvier's reference to 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 43, § 16 is valuable, however, as it pinpoints the English statutory abolition.
None of the three dictionaries addresses the American legal context, which is appropriate — ley gager is a term of purely English procedural history.
Jurisdictional Note
Ley gager and the wager of law procedure it initiated were abolished in England by statute in 1833. The procedure was never systematically adopted in American courts, though isolated colonial-era references exist in jurisdictions that initially received English common law wholesale. For practical purposes, ley gager is an English historical term only.