Definition of "were"

Maccabi would have been out of contention were it not for Stoke's profligacy, but their fortune eventually ran out as the visitors opened the scoring.

2011 November 3, David Ornstein, “Macc Tel-Aviv 1 - 2 Stoke”, in BBC Sport‎

Every man was valued at a certain sum, which was called his were.

1799-1805, Sharon Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons

If by that he failed to pay or give security for the were, or fine, at which murder was legally rated; he might be put to death by the relatives of the murdered man.

1867, John Lingard, T. Young, Introduction to English History [...] arranged [...] by T. Young, page 19

Written statutes busied themselves only with the amount of the were, or fine, or (for the first century after the Conquest) with the method of procedure.

1908, Frederic Jesup Stimson, The Law of the Federal and State Constitutions of the United States, page 13

The consequence of conviction was, the payment to the person injured, of a were, or penalty, proportioned to the offencel but though this was the ordinary course, the recovery of the were was not the only object of the proceedings. "The were," says Reeve, "in cases of homicide, and the fines that were paid in cases of theft of various kinds, were only to redeem the offender from the proper punishment of the law, which was death, and that was reddemable, not only by paying money, but by undergoing some personal pains; hence it is that we hear a great variety of corporal punishments..."...

2004, James Fitzjames Stephen, A General View of the Criminal Law of England, pages 12–13