Englishry

views updated

Englishry. To afford some protection to lone Normans in the tense period after the Conquest, William I declared that if a murdered man could not be proved to be English, he would be presumed to be Norman, and the hundred fined. By the time of Richard I, at the end of the 12th cent. it had fallen into disuse, as the nations merged, though it was not formally abolished until 1341.

J. A. Cannon