Definition
A pecuniary compensation paid to a lord under Saxon law for the killing of his man — that is, his vassal, servant, or tenant. Manbote was one component of the broader system of compensatory payments that resolved homicide in pre-Conquest England. The amount owed as manbote was calibrated to the were (or wer), the fixed monetary value assigned to the life of the slain individual according to his rank and status. Manbote ran specifically to the lord, not to the victim's kin; a separate payment addressed the claims of family.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A sum paid to a lord as pecuniary compensation for killing his vassal, servant, or tenant.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A sum paid to a lord as a pecuniary compensation for killing his man (that is, his vassal, servant, or tenant).
In this instance, the common and legal definitions are essentially identical because manbote is a term of art that entered general historical dictionaries directly from legal usage. The ordinary-language sources track the legal meaning without meaningful divergence.
Common Confusion
Manbote is frequently conflated with the were (wergild) and the wite. These were distinct obligations arising from the same killing. The were was the blood-price paid to the slain person's kindred, compensating the family for their loss. The wite was a fine paid to the king or public authority as a penalty for the breach of the peace. Manbote was the lord's share — compensation to the feudal superior for the loss of his dependent. A researcher encountering any one of these terms in a historical source should expect the others to appear nearby, and should not treat them as interchangeable.
Bouvier's definition — characterizing manbote as compensation paid to the relations of the murdered man by the murderer or his friends — is an outlier and appears to conflate manbote with the were. The weight of authority in the other dictionaries, and the etymological structure of the term itself, confirms that manbote ran to the lord, not the kindred.
Why It Matters in Research
Manbote is a term exclusively of historical legal interest. It appears in sources treating Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and early English institutional law — most commonly in treatises on the ancient constitution, commentaries on Bracton, and antiquarian treatments of the feudal system. Researchers will encounter it primarily in secondary glossaries and institutional histories rather than in primary case law.
The key navigational point is that manbote operated within a tripartite structure of homicide compensation. Any source that presents a single undifferentiated payment for killing will likely be using shorthand. Understanding which payment is being discussed — manbote to the lord, were to the kin, wite to the crown — is essential to accurate reading of the source.
The discrepancy in the second edition of Black's is worth flagging: it references the amount being "regulated by that of the tocre," which appears to be a typographical corruption of "were." The first edition correctly reads "were." Researchers citing the second edition should note this apparent printing error and not treat "tocre" as a separate legal concept.
The Bouvier definition stands alone in directing the payment toward the victim's relations rather than the lord. It is inconsistent with every other source in the Law Mind corpus and with the term's established etymological meaning. Weight it accordingly.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five sources converge on the core definition — a pecuniary payment to the lord for the killing of his vassal — with one notable exception. Black's (both editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill all identify the payee as the lord and anchor the payment in the Saxon legal system. Burrill's is the most precise, noting the etymology explicitly: man (vassal) and bote (compensation), which grounds the lord-directed nature of the payment in the term's own construction.
Bouvier's diverges, describing the payment as running to the relations of the murdered man. This is almost certainly a confusion with wergild or the were, possibly the result of an error in Bouvier's source material or an overly compressed treatment of the homicide-compensation system. No other source in the corpus supports Bouvier's version, and the weight of historical scholarship on Saxon law contradicts it.
What the historical dictionaries collectively underserve is the relational structure of the compensation system as a whole. None of the five entries situates manbote clearly within the were/wite/manbote triad, which is the framework necessary to understand any one component. A researcher relying solely on these dictionary entries would get the payee right but would miss the systemic context.
Jurisdictional Note
Manbote is a concept of pre-Conquest English law with no surviving operational jurisdiction. It has no modern analogues in any common law system and is not applied by any court. Its relevance is exclusively historical and comparative.