Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "with or by the advice of our council." In historical English law, the phrase appeared in writs of summons to Parliament, signifying that the sovereign acted upon or with the counsel of the royal council in issuing the summons. It functioned as a formulaic declaration of authority and consent, grounding the parliamentary summons in the conciliar framework of medieval English government.
Common Confusion
The term should not be confused with the related phrase de consilio (meaning simply "by counsel" or "of the council"), nor with advisamento alone as it appears in other writ contexts. The full phrase is a composite formula specific to parliamentary summons and carries a more precise constitutional implication than either component word suggests in isolation. Researchers should also note that variant spellings appear in historical sources — "consilii nostri" being the standard Latin genitive form, while abbreviated or corrupted spellings ("consilh," "councill") appear in transcriptions of period documents and may create search difficulties in manuscript and printed sources.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a research artifact of medieval English constitutional history rather than a living legal concept. Its significance lies in what it reveals about the procedural and theoretical foundations of parliamentary summons in the formative period of English parliamentary government.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should be aware of several navigational challenges. First, the phrase appears in its original Latin in writs and in secondary transcriptions, meaning keyword searches must account for variant spellings and the likelihood that indexing in older secondary sources reflects the transcriber's orthographic habits rather than consistent Latin. Second, because the phrase is formulaic — appearing as boilerplate in writs rather than as a substantive legal holding — it tends to surface in documentary collections, parliamentary rolls, and constitutional history treatises rather than in analytical legal commentary. Researchers seeking its significance will find more in historical and constitutional history sources than in doctrinal legal texts.
Third, the phrase connects to a broader cluster of conciliar terminology that researchers tracing the development of parliamentary sovereignty, royal prerogative, and the evolution of the Privy Council will need to navigate carefully. The role of "our council" shifted substantially across the medieval and early modern periods — from an informal royal advisory body to institutionalized bodies including the Privy Council and eventually Parliament itself. A phrase that meant one thing in a Plantagenet writ of summons carried different resonances by the Tudor period. Corpus researchers should treat instances of this phrase as period-specific and resist reading later constitutional meanings backward into early occurrences.
Finally, researchers should note that Crabb's English Law — the authority cited in Black's — is a nineteenth-century secondary synthesis of English legal history. It is a useful starting point but should be cross-checked against primary parliamentary roll sources for any serious historical claim about the phrase's usage or meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides a concise entry: the phrase is rendered "de advisamento consilh nos-tri" (an apparent transcription artifact or abbreviation) and defined as "with or by the advice of our council," located in writ of summons to Parliament, with citation to Crabb's English Law at page 240.
The entry is brief and purely definitional, which is consistent with Black's treatment of archaic Latin formulae from English constitutional history — terms preserved in the dictionary for identification purposes rather than doctrinal analysis. Black's offers no commentary on the phrase's constitutional significance, its evolution across periods, or its relationship to the broader conciliar vocabulary of medieval governance. Researchers should not expect depth from the Black's entry; it functions as a pointer, not an analysis. No other standard historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus appear to carry a dedicated entry for this phrase, making Crabb's English Law the primary secondary authority available within the corpus for this term.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase is specific to historical English law and has no operative use in any modern common law jurisdiction. It is relevant only in the context of English medieval constitutional and parliamentary history and the study of historic writ practice.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Parliament (Historical Development); Writs (Historical Forms); Royal Council and Privy Council.