Definition
De averiis is a Latin phrase meaning "of cattle" or "concerning cattle." In historical English law, it refers to a writ available to a person whose cattle or livestock had been impounded or distrained, allowing that person to recover possession of the animals pending resolution of the underlying dispute. Upon giving security to the sheriff — a pledge to pursue or answer the action at law — the owner could obtain the release of the distrained animals before final judgment. The writ functioned as an early procedural remedy within the broader law of distress and replevin.
Common Confusion
De averiis is closely related to, but distinct from, a standard writ of replevin. Replevin is the broader cause of action for recovery of wrongfully taken or detained personal property. De averiis was a specific writ within that family, tailored to impounded livestock and conditioned on the giving of security to the sheriff. Historical sources sometimes treat the terms interchangeably in passing, but the procedural mechanics differ: de averiis required a formal security pledge as a precondition to recovery, whereas replevin procedure evolved along somewhat different lines depending on the period and jurisdiction. Researchers encountering either term in historical records should not assume they describe identical procedures.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal materials — primarily Year Books, early treatises, Registrum Brevium (Register of Writs), and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium. It will not appear in American common law sources except as a historical reference, and it vanishes from practical legal usage after the consolidation and simplification of replevin procedure in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Researchers working in English manor court records, plea rolls, or early chancery materials may encounter the phrase in writ formularies or pleading records. The key navigational point: de averiis belongs to the distress-and-replevin cluster of writs, not to trespass or detinue, even though the factual situations sometimes overlapped. Misclassifying the writ's procedural family can send researchers down the wrong doctrinal branch.
The security requirement — the pledge to the sheriff — is the distinctive procedural feature and should be the focus when trying to trace what actually happened in a historical case. Whether the security was given, forfeited, or disputed often drove the subsequent litigation more than the underlying distress itself.
Bouvier's citation to 7 Hen. VIII. c. 4 points to a parliamentary statute of Henry VIII's reign regulating distress and impoundment procedures; researchers needing the statutory context should locate that enactment directly. Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at folio 68 and the Registrum Originale at folio 81 are the primary writ-formulary sources and remain the most useful starting points for understanding the writ's formal elements.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary provides the most complete entry, correctly identifying de averiis as a writ available upon security given to the sheriff, and pointing to Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, the New Book of Entries under "Replevin," Dyer's Reports, and the Registrum Originale as supporting sources. This is an accurate and serviceable account of the writ's function.
The Rapalje & Lawrence source material provided does not contain a substantive entry for de averiis. The entry reproduced under that source in the available materials is for de contumace — a different writ entirely, concerning heinous misdemeanor and riotous conduct — and should not be conflated with de averiis. This is either a transcription anomaly or an indexing error in the source material. Researchers relying on Rapalje & Lawrence for de averiis should verify independently.
Neither source provides any discussion of how de averiis was distinguished procedurally from replevin in practice, or how the security requirement operated at the county sheriff level. Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium and the Register of Writs themselves remain more informative on those points than either secondary dictionary.
Jurisdictional Note
De averiis is a term of English common law with no direct American statutory or procedural counterpart. American law absorbed the underlying concept through the action of replevin, which was carried into colonial and then state common law. Researchers working in American jurisdictions will encounter replevin, not de averiis, as the operative term from the late colonial period onward.