PAIARE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

PAIAREAuthored

The Law Mind • 568 words

Definition

A Latin term appearing in old English statutes meaning "to pay." The form *paiavit* is the third-person singular past tense, meaning "he paid." The term has no operative function in modern law and survives only as a historical artifact in medieval and early modern English legislative texts.

Common Confusion

Burrill's entry for *paiare* runs immediately into his entries for PAIN (a penalty) and PEINE FORT ET DURE (the historical punishment by pressing). These terms share no meaning with *paiare* but are orthographically proximate and appear on the same page in Burrill's text. A researcher should treat them as entirely distinct. Payment (*paiare*) and punishment (*pœna*, *peyne*, *peine*) come from different Latin roots and address different legal concepts.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working with pre-modern English statutory sources — particularly documents from the period of the Statutes of Westminster — will encounter *paiare* and its conjugated forms in Latin-language passages where payment obligations are recorded or commanded. The term requires recognition primarily to avoid misreading archaic Latin conjugations as proper names or unrelated legal terms.

The principal trap is confusion with surrounding vocabulary. Burrill's entry runs *paiare* directly into PAIN/Peyne and PEINE FORT ET DURE, which are phonetically and orthographically similar but entirely unrelated in meaning. A researcher scanning Burrill's alphabetically may conflate these entries if reading quickly. *Paiare* is about monetary obligation; *pain* and *peine* are about punishment. The proximity in historical dictionaries reflects alphabetical accident, not conceptual relationship.

Researchers consulting the Statute of Westminster II (13 Edw. I, c. 41) — the source Burrill cites — will find *paiare* in a context governing payment obligations and remedies. That statute, enacted in 1285, is a foundational text in the development of English common law procedure and land law. *Paiare* and *paiavit* appear in the record-keeping and pleading conventions of that era and may surface in case abstracts, plea rolls, or chancery records that reference or quote the statute.

Because the term is purely functional Latin with no doctrinal content of its own, it will not appear in legal treatises as a subject of discussion. Its appearances are incidental — a verb in a clause, not a term of art being defined or debated.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the only shelf source to define this term, and the entry is spare: the term means "to pay," *paiavit* means "he paid," and the authority is Statute of Westminster II, c. 41. There is nothing to synthesize across sources because no other historical legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus isolates this term for definition.

Burrill's decision to include *paiare* reflects his characteristic thoroughness with Latin and Law French vocabulary from early English statutes — a feature that makes his dictionary valuable precisely for this kind of pre-modern textual research but that also means many of his briefest entries cover terms that have no doctrinal significance whatsoever. *Paiare* is such a term: its inclusion is lexicographic, not legal.

PAIAREmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

L. Lat. In old statutes. To pay. Paiavit; (he) paid. St. Westm. 2, с. 41. PAIN, Peyne. [Lat. pœna.] A penalty. "To incur a pain;" "to pay a pain." 1 Leon. 203. "Under pain,' pains and penalties," are expressions still used. PAINE (or PEINE) FORT ET DURE. L. Fr. [L. Lat. pæna fortis et dura.] In old English law. Literally, strong and hard or severe punishment. A dreadful punishment inflicted upon those who, being arraigned of felony, stood obstinately mute and refused to plead, or put themselves upon the country. 4 Bl. Com. 324, 325. It is called in Britton, penance, (penaunce, q. v.) and in the statute of Westminster 1, (c. 12,) prison fort et dure, which Blackstone (ub. sup.) considers as the proper and original expression. See Barringt. Obs. Stat. 82-87. This punishment, which was vulgarly called pressing to death, is thus minutely described by Staundford, as quoted in Cowell: "He shall be sent back to the prison whence he came, and laid in some low dark house, where he shall lie naked on the earth, without any litter, rushes or other clothing. And he shall lie upon his back, with his head covered and his feet, and one arm shall be drawn to one quarter of the house with a cord, and the other arm to another quarter, and in the same manner let it be done with his legs; and let there be laid upon his body iron and stone, as much as he may bear, or more; and the next day following he shall have three morsels of barley bread without drink, and the second day he shall have drink three times, as much at each time as he can drink, of the water next unto the prison, except it be running water, without any bread: And this shall be his diet till he die." Staundf. Pl. Cor. lib. 2, c. 60. See a case in which it was ordered, Keilw. 70. per pais; trial by the country, that is, by jury. Id. 349. See Pays. De faire vener pais à certein jour; to cause a jury to come at a certain day. Yearb. M. 5 Edw.