Definition
CONVENTIONE (also writs of conventione) is a Latin term for a now-obsolete English common law writ used to remedy the breach of any covenant made in writing, whether the covenant ran with land (real covenant) or bound the parties personally (personal covenant). The writ took its name from the Latin conventio, meaning agreement or compact. A plaintiff who could prove a written covenant and its breach could obtain this writ to initiate a formal action in the royal courts.
Common Confusion
CONVENTIONE should not be confused with the modern legal term COVENANT, which survives robustly in property law, contract law, and constitutional contexts. CONVENTIONE is the historic writ that enforced written covenants — a procedural vehicle — while COVENANT names the substantive obligation itself. The writ is dead; the substantive concept is very much alive. Researchers encountering CONVENTIONE in historical pleading records should resist the impulse to map it directly onto modern covenant doctrine without accounting for the procedural transformation that separated the two.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Rapalje & Lawrence draws a useful distinction embedded in the same headword. The plural CONVENTIONS refers to a separate and distinct concept: compacts or treaties between sovereign nations, particularly agreements governing the arrest and return of fugitive offenders. In that sense, the entry cross-refers to extradition. The two uses — writ of breach-of-covenant and international compact — share Latin roots but operate in entirely different legal domains and should not be treated as variants of a single concept.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English common law sources will encounter CONVENTIONE almost exclusively as a writ name, not as a substantive doctrine. Its significance in historical sources is procedural: it was the mechanism by which covenant actions reached the royal courts, distinct from debt, assumpsit, or other forms of action. Understanding the writ's scope — limited to written covenants — is essential for reading older pleading records correctly, because oral agreements required different writs and different proofs.
The dual entry in Rapalje & Lawrence is a navigational trap. A researcher looking up CONVENTIONE in that dictionary receives a single block containing both the writ definition and the conventions/extradition note. Failing to recognize the pivot point mid-entry could lead a researcher to conflate a medieval English procedural writ with modern treaty law — a significant category error.
This term appears almost nowhere in American case law, because the forms of action it belonged to were abolished in England by the Common Law Procedure Act 1852 and were never fully transplanted into American procedure. By the time American courts were systematizing their procedure, covenant actions existed but the specific writ nomenclature had dissolved into general pleading forms. Researchers using this term in an American research context should treat it as a historical marker, not a living cause of action.
The references to Reg. Orig. 115 (Registrum Omnium Brevium, the register of writs) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium 145 are the canonical primary sources for this writ. Both are legitimate historical texts, frequently cited in early common law dictionaries as foundational writ-form authorities. Any corpus materials citing these same sources in connection with covenant actions are likely drawing on the same English procedural tradition.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries are in agreement on the core definition: CONVENTIONE is a writ for breach of any written covenant, real or personal, citing Reg. Orig. 115 and Fitzh. Nat. Brev. 145. Black's 1st and 2nd editions reproduce identical language. Rapalje & Lawrence adds the conventions/extradition note under the same headword, which neither Black's edition includes. None of the source dictionaries provide substantive analysis of the writ's historical operation, its relationship to other forms of action, or the circumstances of its obsolescence. Researchers needing that depth should consult Blackstone's Commentaries Book III or Stephen's Principles of Pleading, which treat the forms of action systematically and explain where covenant actions fit in the broader structure of common law procedure.