Definition
A countermanding. A term from medieval English legal procedure denoting the act of revoking or canceling a prior command or directive, most commonly encountered in the compound phrase *contramandatio placiti* — the countermanding of a plea day. In that specific context, the term describes the procedural act of rescinding a previously appointed day on which a defendant was required to appear and plead, and substituting a new day in its place. The effect was to give the defendant additional time to answer, functioning as a form of continuance or delay in the pleading process. Early English legal practice treated contramandatio placiti as equivalent in practical operation to an imparlance — a recognized procedural device allowing a party further time before being required to answer.
Common Confusion
Contramandatio placiti is functionally described in historical sources as "a sort of imparlance," but the two are not interchangeable terms. Imparlance (*licentia loquendi*) was a formal grant of time to a defendant to consider his answer, obtained by request and recognized as a distinct pleading stage. Contramandatio placiti operated by canceling the original plea day rather than formally requesting an extension within the pleading framework. The practical outcome — more time for the defendant — was similar, but the procedural mechanism differed. Researchers should not treat the two as synonyms when tracing procedural history.
Why It Matters in Research
Contramandatio is a term almost entirely confined to the Latin-language procedural records and formularies of medieval and early modern English common law courts. Researchers will encounter it primarily in old plea rolls, writs, and procedural treatises predating the rationalization of English civil procedure. Several points are critical:
First, the term appears in anglicized Latin, not classical Latin, meaning its spelling and usage vary across manuscript sources. Variant spellings and abbreviated forms should be anticipated in original records.
Second, the compound *contramandatio placiti* is the form almost always encountered in practice. Bare references to *contramandatio* without the *placiti* qualifier are rare and may signal a broader or more generalized use of the countermand concept outside the plea-day context.
Third, the conceptual function of contramandatio placiti was absorbed into and eventually replaced by codified continuance and adjournment procedures as English civil procedure modernized. The term has no living procedural counterpart in contemporary practice and will not appear in modern case law or procedural rules.
Fourth, corpus researchers connecting this term to imparlance entries or pleading reform literature should note that the historical conflation of contramandatio placiti with imparlance, repeated uncritically across the dictionary sources, may obscure the distinct procedural lineage of each device. Tracing either concept through early procedural history requires attention to the specific writ or court record at hand, not reliance on the equivalence suggested by the dictionary gloss.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill — define contramandatio in nearly identical terms, each tracking the same description of *contramandatio placiti* and each attributing the characterization as "a sort of imparlance" to Cowell's *Interpreter* (John Cowell, *The Interpreter*, 1607). The near-verbatim reproduction across editions signals that later dictionary compilers drew directly from Burrill or from Cowell rather than from independent primary source research. This is a case where the historical dictionary consensus reflects a single lineage of authority rather than convergent independent analysis.
Burrill alone credits Cowell explicitly, which is the more transparent citation practice. Black's editions repeat the substance without attribution, which is characteristic of how early American law dictionaries handled historical English legal terms. Researchers relying on these entries for anything beyond a general orientation should consult Cowell directly and, where possible, verify against plea roll records or Year Book entries.
None of the dictionaries provide a date range for the term's active procedural use or identify the specific courts in which contramandatio placiti appeared. That gap reflects the limits of the dictionary format for tracing procedural history and should prompt researchers toward specialist histories of common law pleading.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Imparlance; Pleading (Historical Common Law)