Also 6 -our. [a. med.L. compurgātor, or F. compurgateur (14th c. in Godef.), n. of action f. L. compurgāre to purge completely; in mediæval or modern times, app. taken as if from com- together with + purgātor purger, clearer. (The second pronunciation is found in verse of 17–18th c.)]
1. A witness to character who swore along with the person accused, in order to the acquittal of the latter.
Originally a term of the Canon Law, appearing first, according to Du Cange, in the writings of Pope Innocent III. (1198–1216), XVI. Ep. 158, and c. ix. and xiii. de Purgatione Canonica; it occurs in the Corpus Juris Canonici, in Decret. Greg. IX. (1227–41), v. Tit. XXIV. c. v. vii. Earlier Latin names, referring to the laws of the Northern nations, were Sacramentales (Laws of Alemanns, Frisians, Longobards, etc.); Consacramentales (Capitula of Charlemagne, Laws of Cnut, and of Hen. I, c. 64, 66, 87); Sacramentarii (Pope John VIII., 872, 882); Juratores, Conjuratores (Salic & Alem. Laws, etc., etc.). In England the term compurgator appears to have been used only in ecclesiastical law until the 17th and 18th c., when legal antiquaries and historians began to apply it retrospectively in sense 1 b.
a. In Canon Law, Applied to witnesses who either swore to the credibility of the accused when he purged himself by oath, or otherwise swore to his innocence or orthodoxy, so as to clear him from a charge.
[c. 1340. Abp. Stratford, in Lyndewode, Const. Prov., v. Tit. 14. Pro graviori siquidem ut pro Adulterio vel majori ultra duodecimæ manus Compurgatorum numerum non imponant.]
1533. More, Debell. Salem, Wks. 980/2. That thordinary shoulde not put some man to that kinde of purgacion which if hee did, were hee neuer so noughty, he should be sure of compurgatours.
a. 1556. Cranmer, Wks. (Parker Soc.), I. 241. Where you take upon you … to purge yourself of papistry by me and Zuinglius, if you have no better compurgators than us two, you be like to fail in your purgation.
1641. Termes de la Ley, 195. When one shall wage his Law, He shall bring with him vj. viij. or xij. of his neighbours … to sweare with him, much like unto the oath which they make which are used in the civill Law, to purge others of any crime laid against them, which are called compurgators.
1731. Chandler, trans. Limborch’s Hist. Inquis., II. 208. The Judge is to consider the Nature of the Person, Crime and Infamy, and then to order the Number of the Compurgators to be greater or less.
1760. Burn, Eccl. Law (1797), III. 276. By his own oath affirming his innocency, and the oaths of twelve compurgators as to the belief of it.
b. In reference to OE. times (and more generally to ancient Teutonic law), the usual term, with modern historians, for the ‘oath-helpers’ whom a person on trial was allowed to call in to swear that, to their belief, as neighbors of the accused and acquainted with his character, he was speaking truth in making oath of his innocence. Also, sometimes applied by modern legal writers to the same persons in Wager of Law.
A native name for the consacramentales (Ger. eides-helfer) is found only in the oldest Kentish Laws, viz. ǽwda, pl. ǽwdan (L. of Hloðhære and Eadric, 2, 4; L. of Wihtræd, 23) evidently a deriv. of ǽwe ‘law.’ Elsewhere they appear merely as ‘his ʓeferan’ his fellows, ‘þa þe him midstandað.’ In OHG. gieido (Hildeb. in Grimm) f. eid oath: cf. the latinized ‘cum aidis suis’ in Laws of the Longobards c. 364. The oath of the ǽwdan was ‘On þone Drihten, se áð is clǽne and unmǽne þe N. swór’ (Schmid, Gesetze, 406).
1747. Carte, Hist. Eng., I. 367. Compurgators, who swore to their belief of the truth of what the criminal deposed himself.
1762. Hume, Hist. Eng., I. App. 101. Compurgators, who … expressed upon oath that they believed the person spoke true.
1768. Blackstone, Comm., III. xxii. 343. The manner of making and waging law … And thereupon his eleven neighbours or compurgators shall avow upon their oaths that they believe in their consciences that he saith the truth; so that himself must be sworn de fidelitate, and the eleven de credulitate.
1809. Tomlins, Law Dict., s.v. Wager.
1860. C. Innes, Scotl. Mid. Ages, 183.
1876. Freeman, Norm. Conq., V. xxiv. 452. The compurgators of our oldest law were not a jury in the modern sense, but they were one of the elements out of which the jury rose.
1881. 19th Cent., 386. The compurgators were simply witnesses to character … but the effect of their unanimous declaration of belief in his innocence was precisely that of a verdict of ‘not guilty’ by a jury.
2. In more general application: One who testifies to or vindicates another’s innocence, veracity, or accuracy; one who vouches for, or clears from any charge. Also fig.
1613. R. C., Table Alph. (ed. 3), Compurgator, one that comes to purge or free another.
1632. Chapman, etc., The Ball, III. iv. And yet, because you shall not trouble friends To be compurgators, I’ll be satisfied If you will take your own oath that you are.
1641. Argt. of Law, in Harl. Misc. (Malh.), V. 75. By a statute there [Ireland] made in the fifth year of Edward IV, there is provision made … that the party committed, if he can procure twenty-four compurgators, shall be bailed, and let out of prison.
1656. Sanderson, Serm. (1689), 419. He calleth God to be his compurgator.
1681. Relig. Clerici, 202. Urging necessity and impossibility, as Compurgators for their habitual wicked practices.
a. 1714. Burnet, Own Time (1766), II. 213. Lord Russell defended himself by many Compurgators, who spoke very fully of his great worth.
1854. H. Rogers, Ess. (1860), II. 52. We can claim as his Compurgators Dugald Stewart, Brown, Reid, and Sir W. Hamilton.
† 3. (Glasgow.) An official whose duty it was to clear the streets of strollers during church time on Sunday. (Abolished after the middle of the 18th c.)
18[?]. D. Bannatyne’s Scrap-bk., in New Statist. Acc. Scotl. (1845), VI. 229. (Glasgow) Influenced by this regard for the Sabbath, the magistrates employed persons termed ‘compurgators,’ to perambulate the city on the Saturday nights … Another office of these compurgators was to perambulate the streets … during the time of divine service on Sunday, and to order every person they met … to go home.
1854. H. MacDonald, Rambles round Glasgow, No. 1 (1856), 20.
1868. Reprint Jones’s Glasgow Directory, 1787, Pref. 9.
