Definition
An ancient English writ directed to the treasurer and barons of the Court of Exchequer, commanding them not to hold common pleas — that is, civil disputes between private parties — in that court when neither of the parties was a debtor to the Crown. The writ's name translates roughly as "common pleas are not to be held in the Exchequer." Its purpose was jurisdictional: to confine the Exchequer to its proper business of adjudicating revenue matters involving the king's debtors, and to prevent it from encroaching on the common pleas jurisdiction that properly belonged to the Court of Common Pleas. The writ was superseded by the English statute 2 & 3 William IV, c. 39.
Common Confusion
The writ is easily conflated with related jurisdictional writs — particularly the prohibition, which similarly restrained courts from exceeding their competence. The distinction is specific: communia placita non tenenda in scaccario targeted one court (the Exchequer) regarding one category of litigant (common persons, as opposed to royal debtors). It is also sometimes confused with the broader concept of ne admittas or other restraining writs from the chancery register. Researchers encountering references to writs "forbidding common pleas in the Exchequer" should confirm they are looking at this writ and not a general prohibition.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is unlikely to appear in modern legal research outside of English legal history, but researchers working in medieval or early modern English court records, the Registrum Brevium, or studies of the development of English court jurisdiction will encounter it. Several practical points bear attention:
First, the writ's existence reflects a foundational tension in the structure of English royal courts — the Exchequer's persistent jurisdictional creep into common pleas through the legal fiction that plaintiffs were debtors to the king. Understanding this writ helps explain why that fiction was necessary at all, and why the Court of Common Pleas jealously guarded its turf.
Second, the writ was formally obsoleted by 2 & 3 William IV, c. 39 (1832), part of the broader Whig-era judicial reforms. Researchers working on pre-reform English court records should be aware that the writ was operative for centuries before that date; post-1832 references are historical rather than practical.
Third, the Registrum Originale (Reg. Orig. 187) is the primary source for the writ's form. Researchers seeking the original writ text should consult that register directly. Rapalje & Lawrence cite this source, and it remains the authoritative formal reference.
Fourth, the term is rendered inconsistently in historical sources — sometimes abbreviated, sometimes given in variant Latin forms, and sometimes paraphrased in English without the Latin name. A corpus search limited to the full Latin phrase will miss many relevant passages.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence provide the only entry among the shelf sources, and it is spare but accurate. Their definition correctly identifies the writ's addressees (treasurer and barons of the Exchequer), its operative command (not to hold pleas between common persons), and its supersession by the 1832 statute. The entry also correctly notes the underlying jurisdictional rationale — that the Exchequer originally handled only disputes involving royal debtors — which is the key to understanding why the writ was needed.
What the entry does not supply is context for the legal fiction that made the writ necessary in the first place. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, litigants routinely invoked the Exchequer's jurisdiction by falsely alleging they were indebted to the king, thereby transforming what was a revenue court into a general common pleas tribunal. The writ was one mechanism — alongside political and institutional pressure — to push back against that expansion. Historical dictionaries of this period generally treat such writs in isolation without tracing the systemic problem they addressed, leaving the researcher to consult Blackstone's Commentaries and Holdsworth's History of English Law for the fuller picture.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is exclusively English in origin and application. It has no American counterpart — the colonial and early American court systems did not replicate the Exchequer's common-law jurisdiction in the same form. American researchers will not encounter this writ in domestic legal materials.