Definition
An archaic term from old English law with two closely related meanings: (1) a form of ancient currency, specifically small silver coins or halfpence; and (2) a small rent or tribute payable in money. The term appears in historical records concerning feudal obligations and early monetary transactions. It is essentially a dead term — no longer used in modern legal practice — but surfaces in the reading of historical land grants, tenure documents, and records of feudal dues.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An obsolete form of "mail" in the sense of chainmail armor.
Historical common usage: The term shares phonetic identity with multiple older English words, including mail as correspondence and mail as armor, but neither connects to the legal sense.
Editorial note: The legal meaning of MAILE — a coin or monetary rent — is entirely unrelated to the ordinary English word "mail" in any of its modern senses. A researcher encountering "maile" in a historical legal document should not import associations from correspondence or armor into the reading.
Common Confusion
MAILE and BLACKMAIL: Burrill's cross-reference to "black mail" is instructive. The second element of "blackmail" derives from this same root — "mail" or "maile" meaning rent or tribute — not from any association with postal correspondence or racial terminology. Historical documents using "mail" in the context of exaction or tribute likely refer to this monetary/rent concept, not to modern blackmail as defined in criminal law. The semantic connection is etymological rather than doctrinal.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English land records, feudal tenure documents, or manorial court rolls may encounter MAILE as a descriptor of an obligation running with land. The term rarely appears after the medieval period, and its practical significance is confined to interpreting the scope and nature of ancient encumbrances or tenure conditions.
The primary research trap is misidentification. Because "mail" and its variants carry multiple meanings across centuries of English usage, context is critical. MAILE in a rent-table or account roll means a monetary payment or small tribute; it does not signal a postal transaction, armor, or the modern criminal concept. Burrill's direction to "see Black mail" is the most useful navigational pointer in the historical dictionaries — blackmail's legal history is deeply tied to this older sense of tribute or exaction, and corpus researchers tracing the genealogy of extortion-related concepts should follow that thread.
No significant corpus of American case law develops this term independently. It is a term of historical English law that traveled into American legal dictionaries largely as a definitional artifact rather than an operative legal concept.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in strong agreement on the core meaning — ancient money or coin, and a small rent or tribute — with minor variation in phrasing. Black's (both editions) combines the monetary and rent meanings without prioritizing either. Bouvier reduces the entry to its essentials: "a small piece of money" and "a rent." Burrill is the most contextually rich, using "tribute" alongside "rent" and citing Spelman, which points researchers toward Sir Henry Spelman's Glossarium Archaeologicum, the standard authority on archaic English legal terms, as the underlying source.
The historical dictionaries do not explain whether MAILE referred to a fixed monetary unit or a variable rent denomination, nor do they situate it within a specific feudal tenure framework. This is a gap researchers should not try to fill from the dictionaries alone; Spelman's Glossarium or other primary sources on Anglo-Norman tenure would be the appropriate next step.
Jurisdictional Note
MAILE is exclusively a term of old English law and has no operative meaning in any current jurisdiction. Its relevance is entirely historical and interpretive, confined to documents predating the modern common law period.