w English Dictionary_ derives from "mail" (q.v.), meaning rent or
tribute. (1) The primary meaning of "blackmail" was rent paid in labour,
grain or baser metal (i.e. money other than sterling money), called
_reditus nigri_, in contradistinction to rent paid in silver or white
money (_mailles blanches_). (2) In the northern counties of England
(Northumberland, Westmorland and the bishopric of Durham) it signified a
tribute in money, corn, cattle or other consideration exacted from
farmers and small owners by freebooters in return for immunity from
robbers or moss-troopers. By a statute of 1601 it was made a felony
without benefit of clergy to receive or pay such tribute, but the
practice lingered until the union of England and Scotland in 1707. (3)
The word now signifies extortion of money or property by threats of
libel, presecution, exposure, &c. See such headings as COERCION,
CONSPIRACY, EXTORTION, and authorities quoted under CRIMINAL LAW.

BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD (c. 1650-1729), English physician and writer, was
born at Corsham, in Wiltshire, about 1650. He was educated at
Westminster school and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He was for some time a
schoolmaster, but finally, after graduating in medicine at Padua, he
settled in practice as a physician in London. He supported the
principles of the Revolution, and was accordingly knighted in 1697. He
held the office of physician in ordinary both to William III. and Anne,
and died on the 9th of October 1729. Blackmore had a passion for
writing epics. _Prince Arthur, an Heroick Poem in X Books_ appeared in
1695, and was followed by six other long poems before 1723. Of these
_Creation_ ... (1712), a philosophic poem intended to refute the atheism
of Vanini, Hobbes and Spinoza, and to unfold the intellectual philosophy
of Locke, was the most favourably received. Dr Johnson anticipated that
this poem would transmit the author to posterity "among the first
favourites of the English muse," while John Dennis went so far as to
describe it as "a philosophical poem, which has equalled that of
Lucretius in the beauty of its versification, and infinitely surpassed
it in the solidity and strength of its reasoning." These opinions have
not been justified, for the poem, like everything else that Blackmore
wrote, is dull and tedious. His _Creation_ appears in Johnson's and
Anderson's collections of the British poets. He left also works on
medicine and on theological subjects.

BLA