RANSOM, a word common to the French (rancon) and English languages, the sense of which is a sum of money paid for the redemp Hon of a captive.
The paying of ransoms is an event of frequent occerrence in the middle-age history, and indeed may be traced in the history of the older nations. Nothing appears on the first view more reasonable, or would more naturally arise out of the relations of two parties in a state of hostility, than that compensation of some kind should be made for the restoration of prisoners, which compensation was most easily estimated and discharged by means of the common medium of exchange. In modern warfare we hear little of ransoms. It rarely happens that a person is taken captive whom it is of importance to redeem ; and when prisoners are to be redeemed, it is usually done by way of exchange, and those who remain over, at the conclusion of a war, are usually delivered up as a part of the concession of the party in whose favour the difference is found to be.
In the indentures of military service in the middle-age period, as in the wars of Henry V., for instance, it was a usual stipulation that, while the ransom of persons of inferior condition taken in the war was allowed to those by whom they were captured, the ransom for persons of rank was to belong to the king.
The ransoms demanded for persons of eminence were often very large sums of money ; so much beyond the power of any family, however great, to command by the ordinary resources, that the persons who held lands of them were called upou to contribute in proportion to the extent of land held. It was one of the three casual occasions of expense when this kind of extraordinary aid was demanded as of prescriptive right by the sovereign, as in the case of Richard I. of England, of David Bruce of Scotland, and of John of France; the other two being on occasion of knighting the eldest son, and of marrying the eldest daughter.