Definition
A writ of right close in old English law, available to a lord against a tenant who withheld or deforced the rent or services owed as a condition of tenure. The writ compelled the tenant to perform customary obligations — both monetary and personal services — that attached to the tenant's holding of land from the lord. It operated as a proprietary remedy, asserting the lord's right to receive those obligations rather than merely seeking damages for their breach.
The name derives directly from the Latin: consuetudinibus (customs, customary dues) and servitiis (services). Together, the phrase describes the two categories of feudal obligation the writ was designed to enforce: fixed customary payments and the performance of defined tenure services.
Why It Matters in Research
This writ belongs to the highly technical medieval English writ system, where the choice of writ determined both the court and the remedy available. Researchers working in pre-modern English legal history — particularly sources touching on feudal tenure, manorial law, or the mechanics of the old writ system — will encounter this term in registers of writs and abridgments, not in case reporters in any modern sense.
The term appears in the Registrum Omnium Brevium (the Register of Writs), which was the practical guide for selecting the correct writ. Its presence in Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium situates it within the pedagogical tradition of explaining the writ system to practitioners. Researchers using either source should understand that this writ is one of many close writs (breve de recto clause) directed to a specific recipient rather than open writs issued generally, a distinction with procedural significance.
The practical reach of this writ was narrow: it addressed the specific problem of a tenant who denied, withheld, or resisted the lord's entitlement to customary dues and services — what the sources call deforcement. Deforcement in this context does not mean physical dispossession of land but rather the wrongful detention or refusal of something legally owed. Researchers should not conflate this writ with the broader actions available for dispossession of freehold land.
By the time Black's compiled this entry for its supplemental material, the writ had long been obsolete. Its inclusion reflects Black's broader effort to cover the historical English writ system for researchers encountering these terms in primary sources rather than in active practice. No American analogue exists; the concept was absorbed, insofar as it survived at all, into ordinary contract and property remedies following the abolition of the forms of action.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides the sole historical dictionary entry, and it is brief: a writ of right close lying against a tenant who deforced the lord of rent or service, citing the Registrum Originale (Reg. Orig.) at page 159 and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at page 151. These citations are to the two principal reference works of the old writ system, and their inclusion is instructive — they direct the researcher to exactly the kind of source where this writ would be treated at length.
No other major historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus (Bouvier, Tomlins, Termes de la Ley) appear to carry a dedicated entry for this term. This is consistent with the writ's narrow technical scope; it would have been more naturally catalogued in the Register of Writs or in Fitzherbert's treatment of proprietary writs than in a general legal dictionary. Researchers should treat the Black's entry as a signpost to those primary sources rather than as a complete treatment.
The Black's entry uses the spelling "Servichs," which appears to be a variant or archaic transcription of servitiis/servitiis-derived terms; researchers may encounter variant spellings across manuscript and printed sources and should search broadly.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ was specific to medieval English common law and has no surviving application in any modern jurisdiction. It is relevant only to historical legal research in English sources, particularly those predating the gradual abolition of the forms of action culminating in the Common Law Procedure Acts of the nineteenth century.