Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Attainder   Listen
noun
Attainder  n.  
1.
The act of attainting, or the state of being attainted; the extinction of the civil rights and capacities of a person, consequent upon sentence of death or outlawry; as, an act of attainder. Note: Formerly attainder was the inseparable consequence of a judicial or legislative sentence for treason or felony, and involved the forfeiture of all the real and personal property of the condemned person, and such "corruption of blood" that he could neither receive nor transmit by inheritance, nor could he sue or testify in any court, or claim any legal protection or rights. In England attainders are now abolished, and in the United States the Constitution provides that no bill of attainder shall be passed; and no attainder of treason (in consequence of a judicial sentence) shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted.
2.
A stain or staining; state of being in dishonor or condemnation. (Obs.) "He lived from all attainder of suspect."
Bill of attainder, a bill brought into, or passed by, a legislative body, condemning a person to death or outlawry, and attainder, without judicial sentence.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Attainder" Quotes from Famous Books



... continued intermittently to make petty war on each other. At last, in 1638, Calvert took the island by main force and hanged for piracy a captain of Claiborne's. The Maryland Assembly brought the trader under a Bill of Attainder; and a little later, in England, the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations formally awarded Kent Island to the Lord Proprietor. Thus defeated, Claiborne, nursing his wrath, moved down ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... exceedingly occupied with quelling the ardour of the House of Lords, who were requesting that the Holy Maid of Kent and her companions might have an opportunity of defending themselves before the Act of Attainder ordered by the King was passed against them; but he found time to tell his agent that trouble was impending over More and Fisher; and to request him to hand in any evidence that he ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... the Queen restored to her cousin the title of Earl of Devon (forfeited by his father's attainder), and soon after all his lands that remained in her possession, and also showed him other favours. In fact, 'it was reported that she carried some good affections towards the Earl, from the first time that ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... speak of: and if we can divine the future out of what we collect from the past, no person living would look with more scorn and horror on the impious parricide committed on all their ancestry, and on the desperate attainder passed on all their posterity, by the Orleans, and the Rochefoucaults, and the Fayettes, and the Vicomtes de Noailles, and the false Perigords, and the long et cetera of the perfidious sans-culottes of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... an opposite eminence, still retaining the name of Pict's hill, while the one we have just described preserves the appellation of Denne (undoubtedly derived from Dane) hill. The estate formerly belonging to the family of Braose, was forfeited to the crown, with other lands, on the attainder of Thomas duke of Norfolk into whose possession it had fallen: in the year 1594, it was awarded by Sir William Covert and Sir John Caryll to James Boath, by whom it was sold five years afterwards to Stephen Barnham ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley

... condemn, but reconcile; We come not to compel, but call again; We come not to destroy, but edify; Nor yet to question things already done; These are forgiven—matters of the past— And range with jetsam and with offal thrown Into the blind sea of forgetfulness. [A pause. Ye have reversed the attainder laid on us By him who sack'd the house of God; and we, Amplier than any field on our poor earth Can render thanks in fruit for being sown, Do here and now repay you sixty-fold, A hundred, yea, a thousand ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... Prince Regent on the repeal of the bill of attainder against Lord E. Fitzgerald, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... make sex a qualification, which must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity. For them, this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. For them this government ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... this article, I shall set aside our historians (whose gossipping narratives, as we have seen, deserve little regard) because we have better authority to direct our inquiries: and this is, the attainder of the duke of Clarence, as it is set forth in the Parliamentary History (copied indeed from Habington's Life of Edward the Fourth) and by the editors of that history justly supposed to be taken from Stowe, who ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... into it. Yes! the building rises, and it shall rise for ever. God has promised increase to the Church, and her enemies cannot gainsay it. From the more effectual blessing on churches already formed, from the reversal of the attainder, and the bringing into his patrimonial portion of the disinherited Jew, from the proclamation in all lands of the message of mercy, they shall throng into the city of our solemnities until "the waste and the desolate places, and the land of ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... home. Must the truth be told? We are all of us loyal sons of Uppingham, but not all of us were glad to find our return to the mother-country was at last arriving. So far away from the offence, we need not fear attainder if we confess, some few of us, that our hearts were not whole in their welcome of the long-deferred event. It belonged to the irony that waits on all lives which are not too dull a material for fortune's jests, that we should cease to desire our home just when long patience ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... 1. No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... bearing this title on the day of the coronation, and his honourable place of walking immediately before the king in procession. The Earls of Leicester once enjoyed this great dignity hereditarily; through them it descended to the De Montford family, until, on the attainder of the last Earl, it was granted by Henry III. to his younger son Edmund, by whom it became transmitted to John of Gaunt, and eventually to Henry IV. while Duke of Lancaster; since which period it has been prudently suffered to merge ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... vengeance of the Whigs those who have remained loyal to him, yet the outlook for the moment is darkened by the probability that France will come to the assistance of the rebels. The Pennsylvania Assembly has before it an act of attainder and forfeiture which will drive from the colony all those who have held by the king, and take from them their lands; and as soon as the Jersey Assembly meets, it will no doubt do the same, and vote us into exile and poverty. Even if my having taken no ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... represented the famous John De Courcy, Earl of Ulster, and had the blood of Charlemagne in his veins. He served as Lieutenant-Colonel to Lord Lucan. His attainder under William was reversed, and he appeared at court, where he enforced the privilege peculiar to his family of remaining ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... & respecting the commodities, which Wallingford Castle might afford it, tooke this last by act of Parl. from the Duchy, & in lieu thereof, annexed certain manners lying in Corn.falne [81] to the Crowne, through the Marques of Excesters attainder: which Queene Marie afterwards restored in tayle to his sonne, the Earle of Deuon, and vpon his issueles ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... Hall, belonging to the Incorporated Guilds of Weavers, Fullers, and Shearmen, chartered in 1490. Close at hand are steps leading down to Exe Island, which was for many years a subject of dispute between the Earls of Devon and the citizens; but on the attainder of Henry, Marquis of Exeter, in 1558, the property reverted to the Crown. On the conclusion of the Prayer-Book Riots the island was granted to the city by Edward VI, as a reward for the services it had rendered the authorities. Most of the old portions of the island have been destroyed, ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath

... Character Londonderry besieged The Siege turned into a Blockade Naval Skirmish in Bantry Bay A Parliament summoned by James sits at Dublin A Toleration Act passed; Acts passed for the Confiscation of the Property of Protestants Issue of base Money The great Act of Attainder James prorogues his Parliament; Persecution of the Protestants in Ireland Effect produced in England by the News from Ireland Actions of the Enniskilleners Distress of Londonderry Expedition under Kirke arrives in Loch Foyle Cruelty of Rosen The Famine ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... brother, son, or parents. And to him who should slay any one proscribed person, he ordained two talents reward, even were it a slave who had killed his master, or a son his father. And what was thought most unjust of all, he caused the attainder to pass upon their sons, and son's sons, and made open sale of all their property. Nor did the proscription prevail only at Rome, but throughout all the cities of Italy the effusion of blood was such, that neither ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... in Devonshire, there are the remains of a beautiful castle dismantled by Henry VIII. on the attainder of Henry Courtenay, which is situated in a park, concerning which many traditions exist, one of which I will give here as it was told by a native. A great many years ago, there lived a lady at Oakhampton Castle, who was famous for her love of cruelty and for unbounded ostentation. This lady was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various

... said, "a peer without a penny! the name attainted, too, and all lands and property declared forfeit! No, no! it will never do! Years may bring better times!—Who knows? the attainder may be reversed; new fortunes may be gained or made! The right dies not, though it may slumber; exists, though it be not enforced. A peer without a penny! no, no!—far better a ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... not to be found within the king's domains, judgment of outlawry was pronounced against him as a fugitive from justice. Then followed those dreadful attendant penalties; confiscation of his estate and the terrible 'attainder and corruption of blood.' His only son was in America at the time, and, disgraced and with prospects blighted by the news of his father's downfall, he resolved never to return. Twelve years ago this son's youngest daughter, my beloved mother, died, leaving me ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... disturbing the deep pool of penalogy, or entering at all into the question, as to whether Actisanes was right, or whether the police of New York do not overstep their authority in putting on the walls this terrible bill of attainder against certain citizens of the United States, whom their country's constitution has endeavored to protect from "infamous punishments,"—the student of moral science will certainly be thankful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... now follow, enumerating the powers denied to Congress. What prohibition was made concerning the slave trade? Writ of habeas corpus? Bill of attainder? Ex-post-facto law? Direct tax? Exports from any state? Trade between the United States? Payments from the Treasury? Titles of nobility? United States office-holder receiving presents from a foreign power? (Notes.—The object of the first clause was to destroy the foreign slave trade or ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... round, Was just one annual hundred pound; Now not so much as in remainder, Since Cibber brought in an attainder, Forever fixed by right divine, A monarch's right, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... in the King's dominions, and its being made felony for any to correspond with him but his own children, is brought to the Commons: but they will not agree to it, being not satisfied with that as sufficient, but will have a Bill of Attainder brought in against him: but they make use of this against the Lords, that they, that would not think there was cause enough to commit him without hearing, will have him banished without hearing. By and by comes out my cozen Roger to me, he being not ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... with his brother, the ill-fated Lord Derwentwater who was executed on Tower Hill in 1716. Charles had succeeded in escaping from Newgate and made his way to France, where he assumed the title of Lord Derwentwater, although the Earldom had ceased to exist under the bill of attainder against his brother.[361] It was this Lord Derwentwater—afterwards executed for taking part in the 1745 rebellion—who with several other Jacobites is said to have founded the Grand Lodge of Paris in 1725, and himself to have ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... adopted such measures as best accorded with their different characters and situations. Many bore arms in support of the crown, and, by their bravery and exertions, endeavored to secure what they deemed to be the rights of their prince, and their own estates from the effects of the law of attainder. Others left the country; seeking in that place they emphatically called home, an asylum, as they fondly hoped, for a season only, against the confusion and dangers of war. A third, and a more wary portion, remained in the place of their nativity, with a prudent regard to their ample possessions, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... Royal Forest of Needwood and the Honour of Tutbury—of the whole of which the ancient family of Ferrers were the puissant lords. Their immense possessions, now forming part of the Duchy of Lancaster, were forfeited by the attainder of Earl Ferrers after his defeat at Burton Bridge, where he led the rebellious Barons against Henry III. The Chartley estate, being settled in dower, was alone reserved, and has been handed down to its present possessor. Of Chartley Castle itself—which appears to have ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... inferred forfeiture. Thus, the noble purpose of public justice was sullied, by being united with that of enriching some needy favourite. John, Lord Maxwell, was condemned, and beheaded, 21st May, 1613. Sir Gideon Murray, treasurer-depute, had a great share of his forfeiture; but the attainder was afterwards reversed, and the honours and estate were conferred upon the brother of the deceased.—LAING'S History of Scotland, Vol. I. p. 62.—JOHNSTONI ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... said he, "to you,—who of all my friends alone remained true in exile, and unshaken by misfortune,—to you I will confide a secret that I would intrust to no other. I repent me already of having espoused this cause. I did so while yet the disgrace of an unmerited attainder tingled in my veins; while I was in the full tide of those violent and warm passions which have so often misled me. Myself attainted; the best beloved of my associates in danger; my party deserted, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... barbarous age. Its tapestry speaks a language dissonant to the ears of freemen. It tells of exclusive privileges, of divine rights, not in the people, but in the king, of primogeniture, of conformities, of prescriptions, of serfs and lords, of attainder that dries up like a leprosy the fountains of inheritable blood; and, lastly, it discourses of the rights of British subjects, in eloquent language, but sometimes with qualifications that startle the ears of men who have tasted the sweets of a more enlarged ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... business was thus finished—the most painful remained. The Nun of Kent and her accomplices were to be proceeded against by act of parliament; and the bill of their attainder was presented for the first time in the House of Lords, on the 18th of February. The offence of the principal conspirators was plainly high treason; their own confessions removed uncertainty; the guilt was clear—the sentence was inevitable. But the fault of those ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... Simon, twelfth lord Lovat, who was executed in 1747. With six hundred of his father's vassals he joined prince Charles before the battle of Falkirk, January 17, 1746, and was one of the forty-three persons included in the act of attainder of June 4, 1746. Having surrendered to the government he was confined in Edinburgh Castle ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean



Words linked to "Attainder" :   civil death, cancellation



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com