Definition
Bilanchs deferendis is a writ of English law, now entirely obsolete, directed to a corporation commanding that weights be carried to a designated haven for the purpose of weighing wool that had been licensed for export. The term is Latin, meaning roughly "for carrying the balances" (bilancis, the balance or scales; deferendum, the gerundive of deferre, to carry or convey).
The writ functioned as a mechanism within the medieval English wool trade, a commerce so central to the Crown's revenue that it was subject to elaborate regulatory machinery. Wool licensed for transportation had to be weighed under official supervision before export, and this writ compelled the relevant corporate body to bring the necessary weighing equipment to the designated port.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in two contexts within the Law Mind corpus: early English writ registers and antiquarian legal dictionaries drawing on those registers. The Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig.), the primary source cited by Black's, is a collection of original writs that served as a practitioner's form book in medieval and early modern English practice. Researchers encountering this term in a historical source are almost certainly working with material touching on the medieval wool staple system, port administration, or the regulatory powers of trading corporations.
The term has no modern legal application. It does not survive into any common law jurisdiction in active form. A researcher finding a reference to this writ should treat it as a marker of the broader regulatory infrastructure surrounding the wool trade — licensing, taxation, and weighing offices — rather than as a writ with any procedural lineage worth tracing forward.
The writ is also a useful reminder that medieval English writs were highly specific instruments: there was a writ for almost every discrete official act. Researchers unfamiliar with this granularity may mistake the narrowness of bilanchs deferendis for obscurity or error in the source. It is neither — it is characteristic of the writ system's precision.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) is the sole historical dictionary source providing a definition, and the entry is brief: a writ addressed to a corporation, requiring the carrying of weights to a haven for the weighing of wool licensed for transportation, citing Reg. Orig. 270. There is nothing in the Black's entry to dispute or expand upon significantly. The entry accurately captures the writ's function, though it does not explain the regulatory context of the wool staple that gave the writ its purpose.
No other major historical legal dictionaries in common use — not Bouvier, not Tomlin's, not Jacob's — carry a separate entry for this term, reflecting how narrow and archaic the writ was even by the time of their composition. The reliance on Reg. Orig. as the source is appropriate; the writ registers are the natural habitat of instruments this specific.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ was exclusively English and has no counterpart in Scottish, Irish, or American law. It belongs to a period of English legal history predating the reception of common law in any colonial jurisdiction.