Hammer

Used In connection with auction sales; as to bring or come to the hammer, to sell or be sold at auction. Cent Diet HAMSOCN (Saxon from ham, house, sockne, liberty. Immunity). The word is variously spelled hamsoca, hamsocna, haimeuken, hameeaken. Vinogradoff (Engl. Soc. Ill) gives it as hamsocn. The right of security and privacy in a man’s house. Du Cange. The breach of this privilege by a forcible entry of a house is breach of the peace; Anc. Laws & Inst, of Eng. Gloss.; Du Cange; Bracton, lib. 3, tr. 2, c. 2, § 3. The right to entertain Jurisdiction of the offence. Spelman; Du Cange. Immunity from punishment for such offence, id.; Fleta, 14b. 1, c. 47, I 18. An Insult offered in one’s own house (insultus faotua in domo). Brompton, p. 967; Du Cange. Among the Anglo-Saxons It was breaking Into a house; perhaps the time of the day was not an element. See 3 Holdsw. Hist. E. L. 293; 2 Poll. & Maitl. 492. relating to the business of a subject, and their returns; 5 & G Viet. c. 113; 10 Ric. II. c. 1: equivalent to the Roman fiscu$. According to Spelman, the fees accruing on writs, etc., were there kept; Du Cange; 3 Bla. Com. 49. The office whore it was kept was called the Banaper office. It survives in Ireland.

Metuaphorically, a forced sale or sale at public auction. “To bring to the hammer,” to put up for sale at auction. “Sold under the hammer,” sold by an ofticer ot the law or by an auctioneer.

"Under the hammer" refers to public sales by a sheriff or auctioneer. In Rome, auctioneers stood beside a spear fixed upright in the forum; and the goods were said to be sold sub hasta, under the spear.