Definition
A Latin term from old English legal practice meaning to link together or to join interchangeably. The term appeared in the context of warranty proceedings, where multiple writs were issued against multiple parties residing in different counties. Each party was summoned by a separate writ to warrant the tenant alongside the other warrantors. Writs issued under this procedure were called interlaqueata (or "interlaqueated" writs), meaning writs bound or chained together in a coordinated series despite being separately served.
Why It Matters in Research
AQUEARE is a narrow procedural term confined almost entirely to medieval English common law warranty practice. Researchers will encounter it only in sources touching on the old real property action of warranty — a guaranty by a grantor that the grantee's title was good, with an obligation to defend or provide substitute land if it failed. The term has no surviving practical application in modern law and does not appear in American legal practice. Its relevance is strictly historical and interpretive.
The principal trap for corpus researchers is assuming the term relates to water (Latin: aqua). The visual resemblance to aqua is misleading. AQUEARE derives from a different root entirely and carries no connection to water rights, riparian law, or any aquatic legal context. A keyword search in historical sources may return false positives from water-related Latin terms. Researchers should read surrounding text carefully before categorizing any result.
The term surfaces in texts that discuss the vouching process in medieval real actions — specifically, the procedural mechanics of vouching multiple warrantors across county lines. If a researcher is working through Fleta or other medieval English legal treatises and encounters interlaqueata, AQUEARE is the operative verb behind that noun. Understanding the linkage concept is essential to understanding how the writ procedure operated when warrantors were geographically dispersed.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) is the sole source providing a definition of this term, and the entry is brief but precise. It correctly identifies AQUEARE as a term of old practice, ties it to the interlaqueata writ procedure, and cites Fleta (lib. 5, c. 4, § 2) as authority — a thirteenth-century English legal treatise written in Latin and attributed to a judge imprisoned in the Fleet, whose authorship remains uncertain. The Fleta citation is genuine and traceable, and the passage describes the procedural mechanics of summoning multiple warrantors residing in different counties.
No other major historical legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus — including Bouvier's Law Dictionary or Tomlin's Law Dictionary — appears to carry a definition of AQUEARE, which reflects how narrowly specialized and archaic the term is. Black's does not elaborate on the broader warranty action into which this procedure fit, leaving the researcher to reconstruct that context from adjacent sources. The absence of the term from American legal dictionaries underscores that the procedure itself did not migrate into American common law in any recognizable form.
Jurisdictional Note
AQUEARE and the interlaqueata writ procedure are products of medieval English real property practice and have no counterpart in American law. Researchers working in English legal history prior to the seventeenth century may encounter the term; researchers focused on American jurisdictions will not.