Definition
A Latin term of medieval English legal usage meaning to attach — that is, to take hold of, seize, or bring within the court's control — whether applied to a person or to property. The term appears in writs and judicial instruments as the operative command directing an officer to execute an attachment. In its personal sense, attachiare meant to seize a person and compel their appearance before a court. In its property sense, it meant to take goods or lands into legal custody, typically as security for a debt or as a preliminary to judgment.
The term functions as the infinitive or conjugated form from which the procedural vocabulary of attachment derives. Readers of medieval English legal records will encounter it in writ formulae such as præcipimus tibi quod attachies ("we command you that you attach") and tunc attachiari facias ("then you cause to be attached"), as well as the future passive attachiabitur ("he shall be attached").
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of art encountered almost exclusively in Latin writs, plea rolls, and early English legal records predating the transition to English in formal court proceedings. Researchers working in Bracton, Glanvill, the Register of Original Writs, or the Magna Carta materials will encounter conjugated forms of this verb — attachies, attachiari, attachiabitur — and must recognize each as a variant of the same root. Failure to connect these forms risks misreading a writ's operative command.
The connection to Magna Carta is substantively important. Burrill's citation to Magna Carta Johannis chapter 26 and 9 Henry III chapters 18 and 30 situates attachiare within the foundational constraints on royal seizure of property, particularly in the context of debt and the king's creditors. A researcher tracing the constitutional history of attachment procedure should follow this thread: the appearance of attachiare in Magna Carta provisions is not incidental but reflects early limits on when and how the Crown could cause property to be seized.
Because this term appears in writ formulae rather than as a substantive term defined within a document, it is easy to overlook in corpus searches that target defined legal concepts. Searches for attachment doctrine in the Law Mind corpus should be paired with searches for the Latin procedural vocabulary — attachiare, attachiari, attachiabitur — to capture the earliest layers of the doctrine.
Bouvier's cross-reference to DETACH (truncated in the available entry text) suggests a recognized conceptual pairing in nineteenth-century American legal lexicography between the act of attaching and the act of releasing from attachment. Researchers following attachment doctrine into American practice should check that cross-reference.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier and Burrill agree on the core meaning: to attach a person or to attach property, to seize. Burrill provides the richer treatment, supplying direct quotations from Glanvill, Bracton, and the Register of Original Writs, and grounding the property-seizure sense specifically in Magna Carta. Bouvier's entry is brief and deferential, citing Burrill and pointing toward a related entry on the English side of the vocabulary.
What both sources reflect is the standard nineteenth-century approach to Latin legal terms: document the writ usage, supply illustrative quotations, and leave the substantive doctrine to the English-language entry for ATTACHMENT. Neither source treats attachiare as having independent doctrinal content — it is treated as procedural vocabulary, the Latin command form of a broader legal concept. Researchers should not expect either dictionary to resolve questions about the scope or limits of attachment procedure from this entry alone; the substantive law lives under ATTACHMENT and its related entries.
Neither source addresses the transition period during which Latin writ formulae were rendered into English equivalents, nor the effect of the Statute of Pleading (1362) and subsequent language reforms on the use of such terms in practice. Researchers tracing that evolution will need to look beyond the dictionary sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Attachiare is a term of old English law with no direct American counterpart in its Latin form. Its doctrinal descendants — attachment of persons and attachment of property — developed differently across American jurisdictions, and the Magna Carta provisions cited by Burrill informed colonial and early American attachment law in ways that varied by colony and state. Researchers should not assume uniform doctrinal lineage from the medieval writ context to any particular American jurisdiction.