Definition
Attachiamenta is a Latin (Law Latin) term used in historical legal writing to denote attachment in its procedural and property senses. The word appears in two distinct but related contexts in early English and Scottish law:
1. As a general term: Attachiamenta means attachment — the seizure of a person or property by legal process to compel appearance or secure a debt.
2. As a bibliographic reference in Scots law: Attachiamenta is the informal title of one of the oldest volumes in Scottish legal records, named for the two opening words of the document. It is cited as an early authority in Scots law scholarship.
The term also appears in several compound Latin phrases, each designating a specific form of attachment or a related legal privilege:
Attachiamenta bonorum — A distress formerly levied upon goods and chattels by authorized officers (attachiators or bailiffs) as security in an action for personal estate or debt. Functionally analogous to a distraint, this was an early precursor to what modern law calls prejudgment attachment of personal property.
Attachiamenta de spinis et boscis — A privilege granted to officers of a royal forest entitling them to take thorns, brush, and windfalls within their precincts for personal use. This is not an attachment in the procedural sense but a customary perquisite of forest office.
Attachiamenta de placitis — A partial phrase appearing in early sources, indicating attachment in the context of pleas or legal proceedings. The full phrase is not completely preserved in the principal source dictionaries consulted.
Common Confusion
Attachiamenta is frequently encountered in historical legal texts as though it were a single unified concept, but researchers should be careful to distinguish its procedural meaning (seizure of person or goods) from its bibliographic meaning (the Scots legal volume) and its forest-law meaning (the de spinis et boscis privilege). These three uses share only etymology, not function. Conflating attachiamenta bonorum with attachiamenta de spinis et boscis in forest law sources is a common source of interpretive error.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in pre-modern sources — primarily medieval and early modern English law, Scots law, and forest law — and will rarely appear in any legal document after the 18th century. Researchers encountering it should treat it as a marker of historical legal practice, not surviving doctrine.
Several research traps are worth flagging:
First, the compound forms are not interchangeable. Attachiamenta bonorum relates to debt enforcement against personal property; attachiamenta de spinis et boscis is a forest administration privilege with no connection to civil procedure. A source using one phrase is operating in an entirely different legal domain than a source using the other.
Second, the Scots law bibliographic usage — referring to the ancient volume called Attachiamenta — can generate confusion when the word appears in footnotes or citations. It is not always clear whether an author is citing attachment doctrine or the volume itself.
Third, the Latin plural and genitive forms vary across manuscripts. Attachiamenta is itself a neuter plural, which sometimes leads 19th-century editors to treat it as a singular abstract noun. Researchers using digitized historical texts should be alert to variant spellings including attachiament, attachement, and the anglicized forms derived from them.
Fourth, the agent noun attachiator (the officer performing the attachment) appears in related sources and may be useful for cross-referencing early court records, forest eyre proceedings, and bailiff accounts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's first edition is sparse, treating attachiamenta only as the name of the old Scots law volume and noting Jacob and Whishaw as authorities. Black's second edition is substantially more useful, providing the compound forms with brief but meaningful definitions and citing Kennett's Parochial Antiquities for the forest law variant.
The two editions are largely consistent but differ in depth. Neither edition addresses the procedural history of attachiamenta bonorum with any analytical care, and neither distinguishes the forest law usage from the general attachment concept in a way that would help a researcher unfamiliar with the underlying doctrine. The second edition's partial preservation of attachiamenta de placitis — the phrase appears truncated — is a notable gap that researchers should be aware of when relying solely on the dictionary entry rather than primary sources.
Neither edition connects attachiamenta to the broader development of the writ of attachment, which is the more useful conceptual bridge for understanding how this Latin terminology maps onto later common law process.
Jurisdictional Note
Attachiamenta as a functioning legal term belongs primarily to English common law, Scots law, and the law of the royal forests. It has no operative meaning in American law and does not appear as a term of art in any modern U.S. jurisdiction. Researchers working in Scottish legal history should note that the Scots usage of the term (the ancient volume) is distinct from and unrelated to the English procedural usage.