BLACK-Mail, a certain rate of money, corn, cattle, or other valuable, anciently paid by the inhabitants of towns in Westmoreland, Cumberland, Northumberland, and Durham, to divers persons on or near the borders, being men of name, and allied with others in those parts, known to be great robbers and plunderers, in order to be by them freed and protected from pillage. This composition with thieves, or rather the protectors and supporters of thieves, was strictly prohibited by the 43 Elizabeth, c. 13, and in point of fact seems to have been early checked in the English border counties. But, in the Highlands of Scotland, which were brought under the dominion of the law at a much later period, the exaction of black-mail from the lowland borderers continued in spite of every effort that could be made to put it down, till after the quelling of the insurrection in 1745.
Black-mail is defined by Dr Jamieson "a tax or contribution paid by heritors or tenants, for the security of their property, to those freebooters who were wont to make inroads on estates, destroying the corns, or driving away the cattle;" and such was the power of these freebooters, and so feeble was the arm of the law, that this illegal contribution received, at one time, a kind of judicial sanction. At all events, where the government could afford no protection against the liftings or herschips practised by the cearnachs and caterans, it would have been absurd to attempt, and impossible to enforce, any prohibition against the prospective composition of such felonies, which were of constant occurrence in the Highlands or on the borders. Rob Roy Macgregor, one of the most noted of these freebooters, overawed the country as late as the year 1744, and frequently robbed the Duke of Montrose's factor of the rents after they had been collected from the tenants, and before they could be conveyed to his grace's coffers. With regard to the meaning of the word, Spelman thinks that this illegal imposition received the name of black-mail from the poverty of those who were thus assessed, and as being paid in black money, not in silver; and Du Cange adopts this idea with little variation, stating that while brass money is called blanque or blanche maille, or white money, by the French, the Saxons and English denominate it black, in opposition to silver, which they account white money. But the more probable opinion is, that the epithet black is here used in a moral sense, to indicate the illegality or iniquity of the exaction. Wachter, however,
defines "black-mail," tributum pro redimenda vexa, deriving it from the German "placken," vexare, exagitare, whence "baurenplacker," rusticorum exagitator; and Schilter says that "black-en" signifies prædari.