Definition
A writ available in English law to remedy the overburdening of shared pasture land. Where multiple persons held rights to common of pasture — whether as an appurtenance to their land or by vicinage (neighborhood custom) — and one or more of those persons drove more cattle onto the common than their right entitled them to, the others could bring this writ to compel a proper apportionment. The writ functioned as a corrective measure, restoring the balance of use among commoners when one party's excess threatened the pasture's sustainability for the rest.
Common Confusion
ADMEASUREMENT OF PASTURE is distinct from admeasurement of dower and admeasurement of pasture's broader genus, the writ of admeasurement generally. All share the same underlying logic — judicial correction of a party who takes more than their lawful share — but each addresses a different subject matter. Admeasurement of dower concerned a widow's land allotment; admeasurement of pasture concerned grazing rights specifically. Researchers encountering "admeasurement" in historical sources should identify the subject matter before assuming which writ is meant.
Why It Matters in Research
This is an archival and historical term with no living procedural counterpart in modern American or English law. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English legal materials, Year Books, or treatises on real property and common rights. Several navigational points matter:
First, the writ presupposes a specific property regime — common of pasture — that itself requires understanding before the writ's function makes sense. Researchers unfamiliar with the structure of common rights (appendant, appurtenant, in gross, by vicinage) will struggle to contextualize admeasurement of pasture correctly.
Second, the term clusters with a family of admeasurement writs. Historical indexes and digests may group these together or separately, depending on the period and the compiler. Searching for "admeasurement" alone will surface multiple distinct writs.
Third, surcharge — the act of overloading the common with excess cattle — is the triggering condition for this writ, and that term has its own legal significance in the law of commons. Understanding surcharge is necessary to understanding when this writ lay.
Fourth, the writ is tied to the English common law writ system that was substantially abolished by the Common Law Procedure Acts of the mid-nineteenth century. After that period, equivalent relief, where available at all, would be sought through different procedural mechanisms. Researchers working across that legislative threshold should account for the discontinuity.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the core definition, citing Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (fol. 229a) and Crabb's A Practical Treatise on the Law of Real Property (vol. 1, p. 318, § 358). These citations anchor the writ firmly in classical English common law scholarship. Bracton, writing in the thirteenth century, represents one of the earliest systematic treatments of English property law, and his inclusion here signals the writ's deep antiquity.
Black's definition is functional but compressed. It identifies the right-holders, the triggering condition (surcharge), and the two relevant types of common (appendant and by vicinage), but does not elaborate on the writ's procedure, the form of relief granted, or how the admeasurement was actually conducted once the writ issued. Crabb's treatise, which Black cites, provides more substantive analysis of the mechanics of common rights and is the more useful secondary source for a researcher needing procedural or doctrinal depth.
No divergence among historical sources is identifiable from available materials, but the scarcity of dictionary treatment itself signals the writ's narrow and specialized character. It does not appear to have generated significant doctrinal controversy or evolution.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is a creature of English common law and has no established counterpart in American law. American jurisdictions never developed the same system of common of pasture as a widespread property institution, and the writ form itself was not transplanted in any meaningful way. Researchers working in American historical property law should treat this term as English-law-specific.