Fine

A sum of money paid to the Crown to obtain some grant, concession, or privilege. Unlike amercement, a fine is not a monetary penalty, although failure to offer and pay a customary fine for some right, will undoubtedly lead to an amercement.

♦ Sum paid to a lord in return for the granting of a favor (such as permission to marry or permission to enter a holding).

(Bennett, Judith M. Women in the Medieval English Countryside, 234)

A) In the usage of the twelfth century a fine was not necessarily or even usually a monetary penalty. It was, rather, a sum of money which an applicant to the Crown agreed to pay for having some grant, concession, or privilege. The use of the word approaches nearest its modern connotation in payments to escape the consequences of the king's displeasure. "To make fine": to make one's peace, settle a matter, obtain exemption from punishment.

B) A "final agreement". Blackstone: "an amicable composition or agreement of a suit, either actual or fictitious, by leave of the king or his justices". The agreement was embodied in a document known as a fine or final concord.

(Warren, W.L. Henry II, 634)

Note: from Latin finis, end

See Scutage.