1. The act of degrading.
2. The depriving of an order; the depriving of a dignity.
“Disgrading, or degrading, is when a man having taken upon him a dignity temporal or spiritual, is afterwards thereof deprived, be he knight, clerk or other. Whereof if a clerk be delivered to his ordinary, and cannot clear himself of the offence whereof he is convicted by the jury, he shall be disgraded for it; which is nothing else but the deprivation of him from those orders he hath taken upon him, as priesthood, deaconship, or otherwise…. In like manner there is disgrading of a knight …. And it is worthy the observation, that by the canon law there are two kinds of disgradings; the one summary, by word only, and the other solemn, by devesting the party disgraded from those ornaments and rites which are the ensigns of his order or degree.” Termes de la Ley 175–76 (1st Am. ed. 1812).
