[a. AF. chance medlée mixed or mingled chance or casualty: see CHANCE; medler is a var. of mesler to mix, mingle: see MEDDLE. From the fact that medley is also a sb., and chance medley a possible combination in the sense of ‘fortuitous medley,’ the meaning has often been mistaken, and the expression misused.]
1. Law. Accident or casualty not purely accidental, but of a mixed character. Chiefly in Manslaughter by chance-medley (for which later writers often use chance-medley itself): ‘the casual killing of a man, not altogether without the killer’s fault, though without an evil intent; homicide by misadventure; homicide mixt’ (Cowel).
1494. Fabyan, VII. 499. Sir Thomas de Agorne … was by Chaunce medley slayne of a Bryton knyght.
1530–1. Act 22 Hen. VIII., xiv. Sayntuary for that … offence of … manslaughter by chaunce medly.
1546. Langley, Pol. Verg. De Invent., III. viii. 74 b. That had doen any murther unware or by chauncemedly.
1577. Holinshed, Chron., II. 74. William Rufus … received his deaths wound by casualtie or chancemedlie.
1581. J. Bell, Haddon’s Answ. Osor., 390. If a man had committed manslaughter by chauncemedley.
1620. J. Wilkinson, Treat. Coroners & Sherifes, 9. To put a difference betweene homicide by chaunce-medley and murder.
1631. J. Taylor (Water P.), Turn Fort. Wheel (1848), Pref. Is hap turn’d haples, or is chance chance medly?
1670. Blount, Law Dict., Manslaughter … differs from Murder, because it is not done with foregoing malice; and from Chancemedley, because it has a present intent to kill.
1742. Lond. Mag., 359. The Jury found it Chance Medley.
1855. Brimley, Ess. Tennyson, 80. Why does … Hamlet, after murdering Polonius, die by chance medley?
b. fig.
1642. Fuller, Holy & Prof. St., III. ii. 155. If without thine intention … by chancemedly thou hittest Scripture in ordinary discourse, yet fly to the city of refuge, and pray to God to forgive thee.
a. 1745. Swift, Wks. (1841), II. 116. By mere chance-medley shot his own fortune dead with a single text.
2. Inadvertency, haphazard or random action, into which chance largely enters. (Erroneously put for ‘pure chance,’ and for ‘a fortuitous medley or confusion.’)
1583. Fulke, Defence, vii. 319. You make them in the case of chance medley, that have translated ‘sheol’ a grave.
1645. Milton, Tetrach. (1851), 213. This is true in the generall right of marriage, but not in the chance medley of every particular match.
1785. Cowper, Tirocin., 858. Whom thou wilt chuse … Is all chance-medley and unknown to me.
1849. Sir F. B. Head, Stokers & Pokers, viii. 72. The strange chance-medley of objects before us.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), IV. 70. Asking whether all this which they call the universe is left to the guidance of unreason and chance medley.
3. attrib.
1822. W. Irving, Braceb. Hall, xxvii. 247. Having been handled rather roughly … in the chance-medley affair of May-day.
1844. Disraeli, Coningsby, III. ii. 93. Such lax, chance-medley maxims.
1853. Sir J. Herschel, Pop. Lect. Sc., iv. § 22 (1873), 159. By a simple chance-medley confusion.
