Definition
Latin: "That you remove your hands." A writ issued in old English practice commanding the Crown to restore possession of property to a subject who had successfully established a superior right to it. After an office found — a formal inquisition establishing that property had escheated or been forfeited to the king — the Crown took possession of the lands or goods in question. A subject claiming wrongful dispossession could challenge that seizure by way of petition of right (petition de droit), monstrans de droit (showing of right), or traverse of the office. If the challenge succeeded, the court issued the writ of amoveas manus, directing that the king's hands be removed from the property and possession restored to the rightful claimant. The writ takes its name from the operative words of the judgment: quod manus domini regis amoveantur — "that the hands of the lord king be removed."
In later English practice, as described in Rapalje & Lawrence, the writ issued from the Exchequer Division of the High Court of Justice and served the same restorative function: commanding restitution to a private person of property held by the Crown, whether following a successful extent proceeding or the reversal of an outlawry.
Common Confusion
Amoveas manus is closely associated with — but distinct from — the related remedial proceedings that preceded it. The petition of right and monstrans de droit were the means by which a subject asserted a claim against the Crown; amoveas manus was the writ that gave effect to a successful outcome of those proceedings. Researchers may also encounter the phrase "ouster le main" (the Law French equivalent), used interchangeably in older sources to describe the same judgment of restoration.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical English sources and has no operative significance in modern common-law jurisdictions. Researchers encounter it primarily when tracing the procedural history of Crown proceedings, escheat doctrine, outlawry, or the development of the petition of right as a remedy against the sovereign.
Several navigational points are worth keeping in mind. First, the term is embedded in a cluster of interrelated concepts — office found, inquisition, monstrans de droit, petition de droit, traverse, extent — and cannot be understood in isolation. A researcher following a citation to amoveas manus in a secondary source will almost certainly need to work through those surrounding concepts as well. Second, the writ belongs to a procedural world that was substantially reformed or abolished by English legislation in the nineteenth century, particularly the Petitions of Right Act 1860. Sources predating that reform describe a more elaborate Crown proceedings framework than anything recognizable in modern practice. Third, American legal sources treat this term as purely historical; it did not survive transplantation to colonial or early American practice in any meaningful form, and state escheat statutes developed their own distinct procedural frameworks.
The page references in the historical dictionaries — Blackstone's Commentaries Book III and Stephen's Commentaries — are the most reliable primary guides to the procedural context.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on substance. Black's (both editions) and Burrill's each identify the writ as the remedy following a successful challenge to Crown possession, triggered by the office found, and name the operative Latin phrase quod manus domini regis amoveantur as the source of the term. Burrill adds the Law French parallel, ouster le main, and cites both Blackstone and Stephen's Commentaries, providing useful anchoring in the primary treatise literature. Rapalje & Lawrence is notably the most procedurally detailed of the sources, situating the writ within the Exchequer Division's later practice and connecting it explicitly to extent proceedings and the reversal of outlawry — a dimension the other sources underemphasize.
No source in the corpus addresses the abolition of the writ or its relationship to the Petitions of Right Act 1860. Researchers relying solely on these dictionary definitions will come away with an accurate but incomplete picture; the nineteenth-century reform history requires supplementation from treatise and statutory sources outside the dictionary shelf.
Jurisdictional Note
Amoveas manus is a term of purely English legal history. It has no recognized application in United States federal or state law, and Canadian, Australian, and other common-law jurisdictions replaced the underlying Crown proceedings framework with statutory petition-of-right or crown liability regimes long before modern practice. Encountering this term in a legal document signals a historical English context.