Definition
An Anglo-Latin procedural term from medieval English law referring to the strengthening or reinforcement of a legal obligation or compulsory process. The term appears in three principal procedural contexts in Bracton and early common law practice:
1. Aforciamentum plegiorum: The reinforcement of pledges. Where a defendant had been attached and then failed to appear, the plaintiff could offer himself again on a subsequent day, at which point the defendant was required to be attached by better (stronger) pledges — a procedural escalation designed to compel appearance.
2. Aforciamentum districtionis: The aforcement, or strengthening, of a distress. A step in the distraint process by which the seizing of goods was intensified or repeated to coerce compliance.
3. Aforciamentum curiae: The aforcement of a court — a reinforcement of the court's authority or process, particularly in compelling attendance or obedience to its orders.
The unifying concept across all three forms is compulsion through escalation: where a lighter procedural step has failed, aforciamentum describes the formal heightening of that step.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is encountered almost exclusively in primary sources from the medieval common law period — Bracton above all — and in secondary works treating the early history of English law, such as Reeves' History of the English Law. Researchers approaching this term in corpus materials should be aware of several navigational points.
First, the term will not appear in modern legal databases or practice materials. Its presence in a source is a strong signal that the source is either a pre-modern primary text, a 19th-century legal history, or a treatise discussing the origins of attachment, distress, or court process.
Second, the three forms of aforciamentum map onto distinct procedural tracks — attachment of persons (pledges), distraint of property, and court authority — that later developed into separate and largely unrelated doctrines. A researcher following a thread about distress will find aforciamentum districtionis relevant; a researcher tracing the history of default and appearance procedure will want aforciamentum plegiorum.
Third, the spelling varies across sources. Aforciamentum, aforcement, aforciare, and related forms all appear in medieval and early modern legal writing. Corpus searches should account for these variants.
Fourth, the Bracton folios cited (35, 330, 439b) are the authoritative anchors for this term. Any other source treating aforciamentum without reference to Bracton should be read with caution.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only dedicated entry for this term among the standard historical legal dictionaries, and its treatment is concise but well-sourced. Burrill correctly identifies the three principal forms and anchors each to Bracton, with secondary support from Reeves' History of English Law — both reliable sources for this period.
No significant divergence exists across historical authorities on this term, simply because so few authorities treat it at all. The term is absent from later dictionaries (Bouvier, Black's early editions) that focus on law still in active practice, which itself signals the term's purely historical character by the 19th century.
Burrill's entry is notable for what it does not explain: the precise procedural mechanics of how pledges were "strengthened," and the relationship between aforciamentum and the writ of attachment more broadly. Reeves' History of English Law, volume one, provides the most accessible secondary treatment for researchers wanting procedural context.
Jurisdictional Note
This term belongs exclusively to the early English common law tradition. It has no equivalent in civil law systems and did not carry into American colonial or post-independence legal practice as an operative term.