Definition
A Latin writ directing the admission of a guardian or keeper to a position of custody. The writ compelled a relevant officer or body to formally receive and install an appointed custodian — typically the guardian of an idiot or person of unsound mind — into the exercise of their charge. It functioned as an enforcement mechanism in the custodial appointment process, ensuring that an appointment already made was given practical effect.
The term is most commonly encountered as part of the paired phrase *de custode admittendo*, under which heading the substantive treatment of the writ is usually found in historical legal sources.
Common Confusion
*Custode admittendo* (admitting or installing a guardian) should not be confused with *custode removendo* (removing a guardian). The two writs are procedural opposites within the same jurisdictional framework. In abbreviated manuscript references, the operative participle — *admittendo* versus *removendo* — is the only distinguishing term, and misreading it inverts the legal effect entirely.
Why It Matters in Research
This term functions primarily as a cross-reference marker in historical legal dictionaries. Burrill's own entry does nothing more than redirect to *de custode admittendo*, which means researchers who encounter *custode admittendo* in a primary source index, writ register, or procedural treatise must follow that redirect to locate substantive discussion.
The writ belongs to a family of related writs governing the appointment, removal, and control of guardians over persons legally classified as incapable — principally idiots and lunatics under the old English classification scheme. Researchers working in chancery records, prerogative jurisdiction materials, or early equity practice will encounter this writ alongside companions such as *de custode removendo* (removal of a guardian) and *de idiota inquirendo* (inquisition into a person's mental capacity). Understanding that *custode admittendo* is the admittance step in a larger procedural sequence helps researchers place individual documents within that sequence.
Because the writ operates within pre-modern guardianship and mental incapacity law, it will not appear in modern statutory or case research. Its relevance is confined to historical legal sources: writ registers, Chancery proceedings, and treatises on the prerogative jurisdiction of the Crown over persons *non compos mentis*. Fitzherbert's *Natura Brevium* and Coke's treatment of prerogative writs are the primary English sources for the substantive law underlying this writ, though neither uses this abbreviated form as a primary heading.
Researchers should be alert to variant Latin forms. Abbreviated writ titles drop the *de* prefix in indexes and marginal notations, so *custode admittendo* and *de custode admittendo* refer to the same instrument. Confusion between the *admittendo* writ (installing a guardian) and the *removendo* writ (removing one) is easy in manuscript sources where only abbreviated headings appear.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides only a bare cross-reference, sending the reader to *de custode admittendo* without independent elaboration. This is consistent with Burrill's general treatment of Latin writ names that were commonly cited in shortened form: the abbreviated title is acknowledged, but substance is consolidated under the full *de* construction.
Other major historical law dictionaries of the period follow a similar economy with this class of writ. Jacob's *Law Dictionary* and Tomlin's *Law Dictionary* address the *de custode* writs as a family, typically under the *de* heading, with little or no separate entry for the shortened form. The practical consequence for researchers is that no single historical dictionary provides a self-contained account of this writ's procedure or conditions of issue under the abbreviated title alone; the full form must be consulted.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is any sustained discussion of how the writ interacted with the Chancery's inquisition process — the procedural predicate that had to be satisfied before *custode admittendo* could issue. That gap must be filled by treatise literature and primary records rather than dictionary sources.