Also black-mail, blackmail. [f. MAIL = rent, tribute.]
1. Hist. A tribute formerly exacted from farmers and small owners in the border counties of England and Scotland, and along the Highland border, by freebooting chiefs, in return for protection or immunity from plunder.
1552. Abp. Hamilton, Catech. (1884), 98. Quhay takis ouer sair mail, ouer mekle ferme, or ony blake maillis, fra thair tennands.
c. 1561. R. Maitland, Thievis Liddesd., vi. Commoun taking of blak maill.
1567. Scot. Act Jas. VI. (1597), xxi. Diuers subjects of the Inland, takis and sittis vnder their assurance, payand them black-maill, and permittand them to reif, herrie, and oppresse their Nichtbouris.
1601. Act 43 Eliz., xiii. Sundry of her Maiesties louing Subiects within the sayd [4 northern] Counties … have been inforced to pay a certaine rate of money, corne, cattell, or other consideration, commonly there called by the name of Blacke maile.
1707. Addr. fr. Cumbrld., in Lond. Gaz., No. 4334/2. There is, now, no Debatable Land to contend for; no Black Mail to be paid to the Leaders of the Robbers, as a Ransom.
1768. Blackstone, Comm., IV. 263.
1814. Scott, Wav., I. 222. The boldest of them will never steal a hoof from any one that pays black-mail to Vich Ian Vohr.
1875. Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. xvi. 344. Preferring to pay blackmail to the Scots.
2. By extension: Any payment extorted by intimidation or pressure, or levied by unprincipled officials, critics, journalists, etc., upon those whom they have it in their power to help or injure.
1840. Macaulay, Clive, Ess. (1854), II. 503. Even the wretched phantom who still bore the imperial title stooped to pay this ignominious black-mail.
1860. Mrs. Harvey, Cruise Claymore, 216. Arabs infesting the country, and levying blackmail on all passers-by.
1863. Longf., Birds Killingw., 36. Marauders who, in lieu of pay, Levied black-mail upon the garden beds.
† 3. Law. Rent reserved in labor, produce, etc., as distinguished from ‘white rents,’ which were reserved in ‘white money’ or silver. Obs. (Coke’s and Blackstone’s explanation of redditus nigri, which Camden appears to have taken for rents in ‘black money’ or copper.)
1605. Camden, Rem., 205. Black money (what that was I know not, if it were not of Copper, as Maill and Black-maill).
1642. Coke, Inst., II. Magna Ch. viii. Work-days, rent cummin, rent corn, etc. … called Redditus nigri, black maile, that is, black rents.
1768. Blackstone, Comm., II. 42.
