Definition
Assisa utrum (also written assise of utrum) is a medieval English writ and inquest procedure used to determine whether land was held in free alms (frankalmoin) — that is, as ecclesiastical tenure — or as lay fee subject to ordinary feudal obligations. The proceeding took its name from the Latin word *utrum*, meaning "whether," reflecting the central question put to the jury: whether the disputed land was held by the church as spiritual tenure or by a layman under secular terms.
The assisa utrum was one of the petty assizes of the common law, operating alongside the assize of novel disseisin and the assize of mort d'ancestor. It was specifically designed to resolve boundary disputes between ecclesiastical and lay jurisdiction over land, and it sat at the intersection of the developing royal common law courts and the concurrent claims of ecclesiastical courts over church property. If the jury found the land to be held in frankalmoin, the matter passed to the ecclesiastical forum; if lay fee, the land and its disputes remained under royal jurisdiction.
Common Confusion
Assisa utrum is sometimes loosely grouped with the other petty assizes as though it performed the same function. It did not. Novel disseisin and mort d'ancestor were possessory remedies for straightforward seisin disputes. Assisa utrum was jurisdictional in character — its purpose was not primarily to restore possession but to classify the tenure and thereby determine which court system had authority. Researchers conflating these assizes in historical sources may misread the nature of the proceeding and the relief available.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in medieval sources. Researchers should expect to encounter it in treatises from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, particularly in Bracton (*De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae*, Book IV), where the procedure is discussed in detail. Burrill's entry is a bare cross-reference, providing no substantive exposition of its own — researchers should treat it as a pointer only and move immediately to primary and treatise sources.
The assisa utrum is significant for understanding the larger struggle between royal and ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Angevin England. It emerged in the context of Henry II's legal reforms, which systematically extended the reach of the royal courts. Because it touched directly on the distinction between frankalmoin tenure and lay fee, it intersects with the broader corpus of medieval land law and tenure classification. Researchers working on ecclesiastical property, medieval tenure, or the history of English jurisdictional boundaries will need this term to navigate sources correctly.
A practical trap: Latin abbreviations in manuscript and printed sources from this period can obscure the term. *Assisa utr.* or *ass. utrum* may appear without expansion. Researchers unfamiliar with the abbreviation conventions of medieval legal Latin may fail to recognize the reference.
The term has no modern legal application. It does not survive as an active procedure in any common law jurisdiction. Its relevance is entirely historical and doctrinal-historical.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides only a skeletal entry — the Latin gloss *utrum*, a citation to Bracton (Book IV, tract. 4.5, chapter 20), and a cross-reference to "Assise of utrum." This is consistent with the entry's character as a purely historical term by Burrill's time; he records it without exposition, treating it as a matter of record rather than live practice.
The absence of fuller treatment in the available historical dictionaries is itself informative. By the nineteenth century, when works like Burrill's were compiled, the assisa utrum had been obsolete for centuries. Compilers included it for completeness and historical coverage, not practical guidance. Researchers should not expect the historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus to provide substantive procedural detail on this term — the real authority lies in Bracton and in specialized scholarship on medieval English land law.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Frankalmoin; Petty Assizes; Medieval English Land Tenure.