Definition
A writ of execution in English ecclesiastical and common law directing a bishop or his metropolitan to admit and institute a clerk (the presentee) to a benefice. The writ issued after a plaintiff had successfully recovered the right of presentation in a quare impedit action — a common law proceeding to enforce a patron's right to present a candidate for a church living. Admittendo clerico was the mechanism by which that court judgment was given practical effect: without it, a favorable verdict in quare impedit remained unenforceable against an unwilling ecclesiastical superior.
The writ took its name from its operative command: to admit the clerk. It ran to the bishop of the diocese in which the benefice was situated, or to his metropolitan (typically an archbishop) if the bishop was himself a party to the dispute or was otherwise unable or unwilling to act.
Core Elements
The writ presupposed three conditions:
1. A completed quare impedit proceeding. The plaintiff must have recovered judgment establishing a right of presentation. Admittendo clerico was a writ of execution, not an original writ — it had no independent existence apart from the underlying action.
2. A specific benefice. The writ was directed at a particular church living, not a general class of appointments. The benefice had to be identified with precision in the writ.
3. A named clerk or presentee. The plaintiff's chosen candidate — the clerk to be admitted — was named in the writ. The bishop's obligation ran to that specific individual, not to the patron's right of presentation in the abstract.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical English legal sources and has no operative relevance in modern American law. Researchers encountering it in primary sources should understand several things.
First, admittendo clerico is intelligible only in the context of the quare impedit action. Sources that define it in isolation — as all three dictionary sources here do — strip it of its procedural setting. A researcher tracing a dispute over church patronage in English records must understand the full sequence: disturbance of advowson, quare impedit action, judgment for the patron, then admittendo clerico as the enforcement mechanism.
Second, the writ reflects the boundary tension between common law courts and ecclesiastical jurisdiction that runs through centuries of English legal history. The writ did not ask the bishop's permission — it commanded him. This coercive relationship between royal courts and church administration is a recurring theme in the corpus and connects admittendo clerico to broader questions about the scope of praemunire, the Court of Chancery's concurrent jurisdiction over advowsons, and the gradual erosion of church court authority.
Third, the reference to Reg. Orig. 33a (Registrum Omnium Brevium, the register of original writs) is the only primary source cited by the dictionary sources. Researchers working with early modern English pleading records or writs should treat this register as the authoritative form book for the writ's text. The Registrum Brevium existed in multiple editions; the folio reference may vary.
Fourth, Rapalje & Lawrence's entry runs admittendo clerico directly into admittendo in socium — a separate and unrelated writ associating gentlemen with assize justices — with no break in the text. This is a printing artifact of the original dictionary and has caused occasional misreading. The two writs share nothing beyond the Latin construction.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three sources are in full agreement on the substance: admittendo clerico is a writ of execution in quare impedit, directed to the bishop or metropolitan, commanding admission and institution of the plaintiff's presentee. The definitions are nearly identical across Black's first and second editions and Rapalje & Lawrence, which reflects the settled, archaic nature of the term by the time these dictionaries were compiled — it was already a historical artifact being recorded, not a living instrument being interpreted.
None of the sources explains the procedural sequence that gives the writ its meaning, nor do they distinguish between admission (the bishop's formal acceptance of the clerk) and institution (the act of investing the clerk with the spiritual charge of the benefice) — two distinct ecclesiastical acts that the writ commanded in sequence. This gap is worth noting: a researcher relying solely on these definitions would not understand why a bishop might comply with one and resist the other.
Jurisdictional Note
Admittendo clerico is exclusively a term of English law. The established church structure and the advowson system from which it arose were not transplanted to the American colonies in operative legal form. The term does not appear in American statutes or case law as a working instrument.