In addition to the blood-money, he not unfrequently received lucrative office, or a pension for life.
A very curious state of things resulted from these customs.

States depended, in large measure, for the execution of their judicial sentences in cases of manslaughter and treason, upon foreign murderers and traitors.

Towns were full of outlaws, each with a price upon his head, mutually suspicious, individually desirous of killing some fellow-criminal and thereby enriching his own treasury.

If he were successful, he received a fair sum of money, with privileges and immunities from the state which had advertised the outlaw; and not unfrequently he obtained the further right of releasing one or more bandits from penalties of death or prison.

It may be imagined at what cross-purposes the outlaws dwelt together, with crimes in many states accumulated on their shoulders; and what peril might ensue to society should they combine together, as indeed they tried to do in Bedmar's conspiracy against Venice.