Definition
A Latin writ from early English law, translating roughly as "for arresting goods lest they be wasted" or "for seizing goods so that they not be dissipated." The full form of the writ directed the seizure and holding of a defendant's personal property during the pendency of a lawsuit, preventing the owner from disposing of, concealing, or destroying those goods before judgment could be rendered and satisfied. It was, in substance, a prejudgment attachment remedy — a means of preserving the subject matter of a dispute (or assets available to satisfy a future judgment) while litigation remained ongoing.
The writ was directed to a sheriff or other officer and operated as a custodial hold: the goods were not transferred to the plaintiff but were arrested in place, kept from being made away with until the court could determine the rights of the parties.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in the older registers of writs and in early common law dictionaries. Researchers encountering it in historical sources — pleading records, Year Books, or early treatise references to the Registrum Omnium Brevium — should understand that it represents a predecessor function to what modern procedural law accomplishes through prejudgment attachment, sequestration, or injunctive relief preserving assets. The conceptual line runs directly from this writ to modern provisional remedies, but the procedural mechanisms are entirely different.
The truncated form of the writ name — sometimes appearing without its terminal word or words, or compressed in manuscript sources — creates a transcription and identification problem. Burrill preserves it in a form that ends with "ne dis[sipentur]," with the final word (or its abbreviation) occasionally dropped or corrupted in older printed sources. A researcher seeing fragmentary Latin writ names in pleading rolls or formularies should check whether the entry is a variant of this writ before concluding it is a separate instrument.
The writ's operative scope was limited to personal property — goods and chattels. It did not extend to land, which had its own distinct protective mechanisms. This limitation is worth noting when researching the historical treatment of realty versus personalty in English provisional remedies.
Because this writ fell out of active use well before the nineteenth-century consolidation of English procedure, it is largely absent from Blackstone, from the later common law treatises, and from American legal materials entirely. Its presence in American legal dictionaries (via Burrill) reflects the tradition of preserving obsolete Latin writs for reference rather than any continuing procedural vitality. Researchers working in American jurisdictions will find no direct descendant under this name; the function migrated into statutory attachment and replevin practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary English-language dictionary source for this term. His entry is compressed: he identifies the writ as lying "to seize goods in the hands of a party during the pendency of a suit, to prevent their being made away with," citing the Registrum Originale (Reg. Orig. 126b) as authority. The entry appears under the truncated heading referencing "sipentur" (the terminal portion of "dissipentur"), which itself reflects how the writ name was sometimes abbreviated or indexed in older registers.
The Registrum Omnium Brevium (Register of Writs), the foundational formulary of the English common law courts, is the original source for the writ's form and application. Burrill's citation to that register is the appropriate starting point for anyone wishing to examine the writ's original Latin text. No significant divergence among historical legal dictionaries is worth flagging here — the term is too specialized and too obsolete for there to have been meaningful doctrinal debate about its scope. What historical sources collectively miss is any discussion of how the writ related to the later development of statutory attachment or how its limitations were perceived by contemporaries; those questions require going beyond the dictionary literature to the Year Books and the register itself.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ was a creature of the English common law courts and has no recognized counterpart in American, Scottish, or civilian legal systems under this name. American researchers will find the underlying function — preservation of assets during litigation — addressed through state attachment statutes and, in equity, through injunctive relief. The writ itself is of historical and comparative interest only.