Letters Of Horning
Letters of horning ''(Scots law)'': a document (i.e., letters) issued by civil authorities that publicly denounce a person as an outlaw. The document was issued against persons who had not paid their debts. Historically, the documents would be announced by three blasts of a horn, and the documents themselves came to be known as "letters of horning". A person who was denounced in these documents was described as having been "put to the horn". History Originally in Scotland, imprisonment for debt was enforceable only in certain cases, but a custom gradually grew up of taking the debtor's oath to pay. If the debtor broke his oath, he became liable to the discipline of the Church. The civil power could step in to aid the ecclesiastical, denouncing the debtor as an outlaw, imprisoning his person and confiscating his goods. The method of declaring a person an outlaw An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern ...
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Outlaw
An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In early Germanic law, the death penalty is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law, as the status of ''homo sacer'', and persisted throughout the Middle Ages. A secondary meaning of outlaw is a person who systematically avoids capture by evasion and violence to deter capture. These meanings are related and overlapping but not necessarily identical. A fugitive who is declared outside protection of law in one jurisdiction but who receives asylum and lives openly and obedient to local laws in another jurisdiction is an outlaw in the first meaning but not t ...
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