Definition
CLOS is a Law French term with two related but distinct applications in the historical common law:
1. As an adjective: "Shut up" or "closed." Used in medieval legal texts to describe animals confined within a structure, or more broadly to indicate enclosure or closure of a space or document. The phrase brefe clos (writ close) is the most durable application of this sense in English legal records.
2. As a term of pleading practice: In old English practice, clos referred to the art of drawing pleadings and entering them on record in Latin in the ancient court hand — the formal skill of pleading in actions at common law. This usage appears in treatises on common law pleading and describes the technical craft of the pleader as a distinct professional competency.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A surname only; the word carries no recognized common English meaning.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately entered; the term is absorbed into related English words such as "close" and "enclose."
The gap here is complete. CLOS is Law French and does not survive into modern English as a standalone word. Researchers encountering it in medieval Year Books or early pleading manuals must read it as a term of art, not as cognate English.
Common Confusion
CLOS is sometimes encountered by researchers who mistake it for an archaic spelling of the English adjective "close" and read it accordingly. While the meanings overlap, CLOS is specifically a Law French form and carries technical legal weight in context — particularly in the compound brefe clos — that a casual reading of "close" would obscure. Separately, the pleading-practice sense of clos is easily overlooked because it appears in a narrow body of early pleading treatises and is not always flagged as a term of art in general legal dictionaries.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in Year Books, early common law writs, or pre-modern pleading records will encounter CLOS in two quite different contexts, and distinguishing them matters for accurate reading.
The adjective sense (shut up; enclosed) appears most often in property and trespass contexts — animals impounded or confined, enclosures described, premises sealed. The Year Book citation in Burrill (M. 3 Hen. VI. 14) places this squarely in early fifteenth-century common law reporting. Researchers should not modernize this term to "close" without first identifying which sense is operative.
The pleading-practice sense is narrower and more specialized. It refers to a professional skill — the ability to draw and enter pleadings in Latin in court hand — and appears in treatises on pleading procedure rather than in case reports or writs. This sense dropped out of legal vocabulary as Latin pleading was abolished in England (1733 for most proceedings) and court hand gave way to ordinary handwriting. Any research into the craft of common law pleading before the eighteenth century may need to account for clos as a descriptor of that skill.
The compound brefe clos (writ close) is the most important downstream term for corpus navigation. Writs close were sealed and directed to specific named individuals, as opposed to writs patent, which were open and directed to the public at large. Distinguishing these two writ forms is essential in early administrative and legal history research.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source here, and it does useful work in collecting both senses under one entry. Burrill draws on Britton (c. 27 and c. 73) for the adjectival and compound-writ senses, and on Townshend's Pleas (1–5) for the pleading-practice sense. These are distinct textual lineages, and Burrill does not fully flag the separation between them.
What historical dictionaries generally miss: the pleading-practice sense of clos is underrepresented in most major legal dictionaries. It does not appear in Bouvier or Black in this form. Researchers who rely on those dictionaries alone will find only the "close" and "writ close" senses and may miss the technical pleading-craft meaning entirely.
Jurisdictional Note
CLOS is a historical term tied to English common law and its Law French inheritance. It has no independent life in American legal usage. American researchers encounter it only in English primary sources and in treatises tracing common law procedure back to its medieval origins.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Writs (for brefe clos and the distinction between writs close and writs patent)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Common Law Pleading (for the pleading-practice sense and the formal skill of drawing and entering pleadings in court hand)