Definition
Latin: "Let him be taken for the fine." A clause appearing at the end of certain old English judgment records directing that the defendant be taken into custody as a consequence of the fine imposed. The clause arose specifically in actions of debt where the defendant denied his deed — that is, denied executing a document to which he was bound — and a jury found against him on that false plea. Because the jury had been put to the trouble of trying the issue, an additional sanction attached: the defendant was to be taken (arrested or held) in satisfaction of, or as security for, the fine levied against him for the false plea. The same form appeared in actions of replevin, trespass, ejectment, assault, and false imprisonment.
The clause is a relic of pre-modern English procedural practice and has no operative equivalent in contemporary law.
Common Confusion
CAPIATUR PRO FINE should not be confused with the general writ of capias, which commanded the arrest of a defendant to answer a suit or satisfy a judgment. Capiatur pro fine was not a standalone writ but a recital within the judgment record itself — an internal directive rather than an independent process. The distinction matters for researchers reading historical records: finding "capiatur pro fine" in a document does not indicate a capias was issued; it indicates only that the judgment record contained the standard clause.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially a paleographic and procedural marker for researchers working in English common law records from roughly the sixteenth through early eighteenth centuries. Several research considerations apply:
First, the clause is formulaic. Like other Latin tags embedded in plea rolls and judgment records, it appears as a set form — meaning its presence does not necessarily indicate that the defendant was actually arrested; it indicates only that the form of judgment appropriate to the circumstances was entered. Researchers should not treat the clause as evidence of enforcement.
Second, the false-plea dimension is substantively significant. The clause signals that the jury was convened to resolve a disputed issue that the defendant lost, and that a fine was imposed as a consequence of that false pleading. In historical records where the surrounding context has been lost or damaged, the presence of capiatur pro fine helps reconstruct the procedural posture of the case: there was a jury trial on a plea, the plea failed, and a fine resulted.
Third, the clause appears across multiple action types. Burrill's entry notes its use in replevin, trespass, ejectment, assault, and false imprisonment — not only debt. Researchers cataloging historical records should not assume the clause is confined to debt actions simply because debt is the most commonly cited context.
Fourth, the Cro. Jac. 64 reference (Croke's Jacobean Reports) is the standard citation for this clause across historical dictionaries. Researchers verifying the source should consult Croke's reports from the reign of James I, which are available in Law Mind's historical reports holdings.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's are in complete agreement on the core definition, and all three sources share virtually identical language — indicating that later compilers drew directly from earlier sources without independent research. This consensus also means the corpus of authority behind this entry is narrow: all roads lead to Cro. Jac. 64.
Burrill's entry is the most complete of the three, adding the list of action types beyond debt (replevin, trespass, ejectment, assault, and false imprisonment) and indicating that the judgment ordered the defendant to be taken. The Black's entries truncate at the same point, omitting this supplementary procedural detail. Researchers relying solely on Black's will receive a narrower picture of the clause's application.
None of the historical dictionaries address what happened procedurally after the clause was entered — whether a separate writ issued, how the fine was collected, or how practice evolved and eventually made the clause obsolete. These are questions that historical legal treatises on pleading and English procedure must answer; the dictionaries treat the term as a static artifact rather than as a piece of a living procedural system.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Capias (historical writ forms and enforcement process); False Plea (fine and procedural consequences in early common law practice).