Degradation

[Lat. degradatio, from de, priv., and gradus, rank.] In English law. Deprivation of dignity or rank; the depriving a peer of his nobility, or a clergyman of his holy orders and ecclesiastical distinctions.

1 Bl. Com. 402. Selden's Tit. of Honor, 787. Staundf. PL Cor. 130, 138.

Anciently, the peculiar punishment of a clerk (clencus,) convicted of a crime. Bract, fol.

123 b.

Called, also, disgrading.

Cowell. Bk>unt.

J>EQB.EE, Degre. L.Fr.&Eng. [Lat. gradus; Gr. ^adfiog.] A step. A term employed in the law of descent to denote the distance from one person to another in the lines of consanguinity, the nearest relatives being always separated from each other by one degree.* Oradus est distan Ua cognatorum.

Meinece.

M. Jur. Civ. lib.

1, tit. 10, g 153.

A person added to a person in the line of consanguinity makes a degree. Take the son and add the father, it is one degree. Take away one of the number of persons, and you nave the number of degrees. If there be four persons, it is the third degree, if five, the fourth, &c.

Co. Litt. 23 b.

See Oradus. Le primer degree arndaunt; the first degree descending. Britt. c.

1 1 9.

Les autres degres plus hautz; the other higher degrees. Id. ibid. Degree en degree; degree by degree, step by step, from one degree or step to another. Id. per tot. Degree p Uyn; a full degree; a degree occupied by a person. Id. Degre vogde; a vacant or empty degree, {gradus vacuus.) Id. Kelham translates this last expression, " a void space;" but it obviously means a degree unoccupied by a person, or made vacant by death. The figures or diagrams used in the old books to represent succession, descent or relationship by Imes right or direct, and tra Dsverse, collateral, or obliqne, are frequently in the form of a series of steps upward and downward, supposed to be filled or occupied by persons.

See Oradus, Linea, DEGUERPY8.

L. Fr. Abandoned. £^elkam.