Definition
A Latin writ of medieval English law, full form *De clerico infra sacros ordines constituto* (sometimes rendered *De clerico infra sacros ordines constituto non tradendo in laicum carcerem* in fuller variants). The phrase translates roughly as "concerning a cleric established within holy orders." The writ was a procedural instrument by which a person in holy orders — a cleric — could claim or assert clerical status so as to be protected from secular imprisonment or secular criminal jurisdiction, and instead be remitted to ecclesiastical custody or an ecclesiastical tribunal. It belonged to the broader machinery of benefit of clergy and the jurisdictional boundary between the royal courts and the church courts in medieval and early modern England.
In practical terms, the writ operated as a formal demand or assertion that an accused person who was a cleric in sacred orders should not be held in a lay prison pending or following trial, but should be delivered to the custody of the bishop or other appropriate ecclesiastical authority. It thus encoded the ancient principle that ordained clergy stood in a distinct legal category — subject to church discipline and church courts rather than the ordinary course of secular criminal punishment.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears rarely in modern legal research but surfaces with some regularity in historical legal records, ecclesiastical court records, and treatises on benefit of clergy. Researchers working in pre-modern English legal history — especially those examining criminal procedure, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or the interaction of common law and canon law before the abolition of benefit of clergy — will encounter this writ and its variants.
The principal research trap is fragmentation of the Latin phrase. Historical sources index the writ inconsistently: sometimes under *De clerico*, sometimes under *clerico infra sacros*, sometimes under the fuller phrase including *non tradendo in laicum carcerem* ("not to be delivered to a lay prison"). Burrill's own entry cross-references this writ under *Dines Constituto*, a truncation, illustrating how the same instrument can appear under drastically different headwords in different sources. Researchers must check multiple index points.
The writ connects directly to benefit of clergy (*privilegium clericale*) and to the network of writs governing the interface between secular and ecclesiastical authority, including *ne exeat* variants and writs of *significavit*. Understanding this writ requires grounding in how benefit of clergy evolved — from a genuine protection for ordained clergy, through expansion to cover anyone who could read (the "neck verse" test), to its eventual statutory abolition in England in 1827.
Jurisdictional note: this writ belongs entirely to the English common law and ecclesiastical law tradition. It has no operative existence in American law, though historical American legal texts may reference benefit of clergy doctrine in early colonial and early republic criminal law contexts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary, the sole source in the Law Mind corpus covering this term, does not provide a standalone entry. Instead, Burrill cross-references the writ under *Dines Constituto* with the note "See De clerico infra sacros, &c." — itself a truncated cross-reference rather than a substantive definition. This is characteristic of how Burrill handles procedural Latin writs of limited contemporary relevance at the time of his writing: he acknowledges their existence and signals the connection to benefit of clergy doctrine without elaborating.
The gaps in Burrill are significant. He provides no explanation of the writ's operation, its procedural history, or the circumstances in which it was invoked. Researchers relying solely on Burrill will find the term identified but not explained. Fuller treatment is available in historical treatises on English ecclesiastical law and in works on benefit of clergy more broadly — notably in older editions of Blackstone's *Commentaries* (Book IV), which addresses the mechanics of clerical privilege and ecclesiastical custody, and in Burn's *Ecclesiastical Law*, which treats the boundary between lay and church jurisdiction in criminal matters in greater depth. Neither Blackstone nor Burn is indexed to this specific Latin writ by name, but both provide the doctrinal context without which the writ cannot be understood.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is a creature of pre-modern English law and has no parallel in American federal or state law. Colonial American courts occasionally applied benefit of clergy doctrine in modified form, but the specific procedural machinery of *De clerico infra sacros ordines constituto* — tied to episcopal custody and ecclesiastical courts — never transplanted to the American context. Research touching American criminal history should treat benefit of clergy as the governing concept rather than this specific writ.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Benefit of Clergy for the doctrine underlying this writ's operation. See also Ecclesiastical Courts for the jurisdictional framework within which clergy in holy orders were tried and held.