1. To make a composition or compromise; to relinquish a claim in exchange for consideration.
“In the thirteenth century the king’s justices wield a wide and a ‘common law’ power of ordering that an offender be kept in custody. They have an equally wide power of discharging him upon his ‘making fine with the king.’ We must observe the language of the time. In strictness they have no power to ‘impose a fine.’ No tribunal of this period, unless we are mistaken, is ever said to impose a fine. To order the offender to pay so much money to the king — this the judge may not do. If he did it, he would be breaking or evading the Great Charter, for an amercement should be affeered, not by royal justices, but by neighbours of the wrong-doer. What the judges can do is this: — they can pronounce a sentence of imprisonment and then allow the culprit to ‘make fine,’ that is to make an end (finem facere) of the matter by paying or finding security for a certain sum of money. In theory the fine is a bilateral transaction, a bargain; it is not ‘imposed,’ it is ‘made.’ ” 2 Frederick Pollock & Frederic W. Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I 517 (2d ed. 1899).
2. To make a settlement of a penalty. • Magna Carta (ch. 55) specifically limited “[a]ll fines which were made with us unjustly and contrary to the law of the land …” (Omnes fines qui injuste et contra legem terrae facti sunt nobiscum).
