Definition
An enclosure; a close or enclosed piece of ground. In old English law, claustura referred to a fenced or bounded parcel of land — a tract distinguished from open or common land by the fact of its enclosure. The term appears in medieval writs and pleadings, often in connection with actions for breaking and entering an enclosed close, analogous to what later practice called trespass quare clausum fregit.
Why It Matters in Research
Claustura surfaces primarily in early English legal records, writs, and Latin-form pleadings predating the standardization of common law forms in English. Researchers working in medieval year books, early plea rolls, or treatises drawing on Roman and civil law foundations may encounter the term where a modern source would simply say "close" or "enclosed land." The critical research trap is conflating claustura with the broader concept of seisin over land or with the action of ejectment — claustura is specifically about the physical enclosure, not title or possession in a comprehensive sense. It connects directly to the Latin writ formula clausum fregit ("broke the close"), which is the far more frequently indexed term in common law sources; researchers who find claustura in an index should immediately cross-reference clausum fregit entries to locate the body of relevant case material. Because the term belongs to the Latin-form pleading era, it essentially disappears from primary sources after English replaced Latin in legal proceedings following the mid-eighteenth century, so sources dated after 1750 will rarely use it except historically.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary derives claustura from the Latin claudere (to close or shut) and places it squarely in old English law as an enclosure. Burrill's entry, though fragmentary in the available text, confirms the core meaning: an enclosed piece of ground, distinguished by its bounded character. Older civil and canon law dictionaries in the Latin tradition (Spelman's Glossarium, Du Cange's Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis) treat claustura and related forms similarly, emphasizing the physical act of enclosing land as the defining feature. None of the historical sources suggest any secondary legal meaning; the term appears uniformly as a descriptor of enclosed land rather than as a term of art carrying independent doctrinal weight. What the historical dictionaries largely omit is the procedural context: claustura gains its legal significance not as a freestanding concept but as a predicate element in trespass actions, and researchers relying solely on dictionary definitions will miss how the term operated in practice within the writ system.
Jurisdictional Note
Claustura is a term of English common law derivation and has no recognized independent life in American, Scottish, or continental legal systems except as a historical reference. American sources that use it at all do so only when citing or translating early English authorities.