Definition
De annua pensione ("concerning annual pension") is a historical English writ by which the Crown demanded payment of an annual pension owed by an abbot or prior to the king, typically for the benefit of a royal chaplain named in the writ. The writ directed the religious house to fulfill its obligation of periodic payment to the designated recipient. It belongs to the broader family of writs concerned with enforcing annuities and periodic payments owed as a matter of legal obligation or ecclesiastical arrangement.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in pre-Reformation English legal records and the forms-of-writs literature descending from Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium. Researchers should understand several navigational points.
First, the writ's practical context is inseparable from the relationship between the English Crown and monastic institutions before the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1530s). After dissolution, the institutional framework that generated this writ ceased to exist, and the writ itself became a historical artifact. Sources postdating the Reformation that mention de annua pensione are citing it as a learned or antiquarian reference, not as a live procedural tool.
Second, the writ sits within a cluster of pension- and annuity-related writs in the old register of writs. Researchers working through Fitzherbert, Broke, or Rastell will encounter related forms nearby; careful attention to the specific obligor (here, an abbot or prior) and obligee relationship (Crown for a chaplain) distinguishes this writ from the more general writ of annuity available to private parties.
Third, because the underlying obligation was ecclesiastical in character — pensions owed by religious houses often arose from appropriations, compositions, or papal grants — parallel records may exist in ecclesiastical court archives, bishop's registers, or papal provisions rather than solely in the common law record. A researcher tracing a specific pension dispute may need to look beyond the common law courts entirely.
Fourth, the Latin title is sometimes rendered in abbreviated or variant forms in manuscript sources. The phrase de annua pensione is the standard formulation, but catalog entries and manuscript indices may use "annua pensione" alone or anglicize the description.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence provide the essential definition: a writ by which the king, having an annual pension due from an abbot or prior for a chaplain, demands it of that religious house for the named person. The entry cites Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at folio 231, which is the foundational forms-of-writs treatise and the natural home for this writ in the historical literature.
The single-source coverage here reflects the narrow and archaic nature of the term. The writ does not appear in later general legal dictionaries such as Bouvier or Black's, which is itself informative: by the time American and modern English legal dictionaries were compiled, the writ had no operative significance. Researchers should not expect to find the term treated in post-Reformation common law treatises except as antiquarian reference.
Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium remains the primary technical source. Researchers requiring the full procedural form and any judicial gloss on it should go directly to that work rather than relying on the brief dictionary treatment.