Definition
An adjective describing a person or offense that is eligible for release on mainprise — that is, capable of being bailed through the delivery of sureties called mainpernors. A person is mainpernable when the law permits their release from custody upon another's undertaking to produce them when required. An offense is mainpernable when it is not so serious as to preclude this form of pre-trial release.
The term is the adjectival counterpart to mainprise, the formal procedure by which a prisoner was delivered into the hands of sureties (mainpernors) rather than held in gaol pending appearance. To say a charge was mainpernable was to say bail of this particular kind was legally available for it.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Capable of being admitted to give surety by mainpernors; able to be mainprised.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Capable of being admitted to give surety by mainpernors; able to be mainprised.
The common definitions here are drawn directly from legal usage — the term has no independent life outside the law. Both Wiktionary and Webster's simply restate the legal meaning, confirming this is pure legal vocabulary that never crossed into general discourse. The COMMON LANGUAGE section is accordingly omitted for substantive content; the definitions are identical because there is no gap to close.
Common Confusion
Mainpernable is frequently conflated with bailable, and the two terms are often treated as synonyms in historical sources. They are related but technically distinct. Bailable refers to eligibility for bail generally; mainpernable refers specifically to eligibility for release under mainprise — an older and formally different mechanism. The key distinction, preserved in Blackstone and echoed in Burrill, is that mainpernors were not liable to the same forfeiture obligations as bail in the strict common-law sense. A prisoner delivered to mainpernors was in the hands of his sureties in a more literal and personal sense than one released on recognizance bail. As the forms of mainprise fell out of use, the distinction collapsed, and later dictionaries — including both editions of Black's — use mainpernable and bailable interchangeably. Researchers encountering the term in early sources should not assume the two procedures were legally equivalent.
Why It Matters in Research
Mainpernable appears primarily in pre-nineteenth century English legal sources and in American materials that draw on English common-law procedure. Its useful range in the Law Mind corpus is concentrated in treatises, abridgments, and statutory materials from roughly the thirteenth through the eighteenth century. Researchers will encounter it most often in discussions of the writs of mainprise and habeas corpus, in analyses of which offenses were bailable at common law, and in early criminal procedure materials.
The key navigational trap: because later dictionaries collapse mainpernable into bailable, a researcher reading backward from a modern source may miss the procedural specificity the term carried in earlier contexts. When Rapalje & Lawrence cite the Statute of Westminster I (3 Edw. I, c. 15) as the primary reference, they are pointing to the foundational English statute that classified offenses as mainpernable or not — a classification that shaped English and early American bail practice for centuries. That statutory framework, not general common-law doctrine, is the correct research destination when the term appears in its original context.
The term also appears in materials discussing the writ of mainprise itself, which was a distinct writ (not identical to habeas corpus) used to compel delivery of a prisoner to sureties. Understanding mainpernable as an adjective keyed to that specific writ, rather than to bail practice generally, will help researchers locate the correct procedural thread.
Historical Dictionary Support
All five source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: mainpernable means eligible for release through mainprise, with sureties (mainpernors) standing as the mechanism of release. There is no disagreement on this point.
The dictionaries diverge in depth and historical grounding. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier offer compact, functional definitions that treat mainpernable as essentially synonymous with bailable. Rapalje & Lawrence add the critical statutory citation to Westminster I, which anchors the term in its legislative origin. Burrill goes furthest, using the entry as an occasion to explain the mainpernor-bail distinction drawn from Blackstone — that mainpernors, unlike bail, did not undertake forfeiture in the same manner and that the prisoner was more directly in their personal custody.
What the historical dictionaries collectively understate is how thoroughly mainprise as a distinct procedure had become vestigial by the time most of these dictionaries were written. The entries preserve the technical distinction but do not flag that by the nineteenth century the term was essentially archaeological — useful for reading older materials but no longer operative as a description of live practice. Researchers should treat all five entries as guides to historical procedure rather than as descriptions of any then-current legal mechanism.
Jurisdictional Note
Mainpernable is a term of English common law origin. American jurisdictions inherited English bail classifications but did not systematically adopt the writ of mainprise as a distinct procedure. The term appears in early American treatises and some colonial-era materials but did not survive as operational vocabulary in American practice. It is effectively obsolete in all U.S. jurisdictions and has been so since the early republic.