Definition
A writ directing the replevy of beasts — that is, the release of impounded or distrained animals upon the owner giving security to pursue a legal action and return the animals if the court so ordered. The writ functioned as the procedural mechanism by which a person whose livestock had been seized (whether as a distraint for unpaid rent, damage feasant, or other cause) could obtain their immediate return pending resolution of the underlying dispute.
The phrase translates from Latin roughly as "for replevying cattle" or "concerning the replevying of beasts." The writ belongs to the family of replevin remedies and represents the older, formal writ-based approach to what common law courts would later handle through the more generalized action of replevin.
Common Confusion
De averiis replegiandis is sometimes treated as synonymous with a replevin writ generally, but the historical sources treat it as a distinct and older form. The general writ of replevin evolved to cover personal property broadly; de averiis replegiandis was specifically concerned with livestock (averia — cattle or beasts of burden). Researchers encountering the phrase in early common law materials should not automatically substitute modern replevin doctrine, as the procedural requirements and scope differed. The distinction matters most when reading pre-eighteenth-century sources where both terms may appear without explanation of the difference.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical sources and should be treated as a marker of early common law procedure rather than living doctrine. Researchers will encounter it primarily in:
— Older English pleading treatises and Year Books, where the writ system governed all civil relief and the precise form of writ was outcome-determinative.
— Blackstone and his commentators, who preserve it as part of their systematic treatment of the forms of action.
— American colonial and early republic materials, where English writ forms were selectively received and researchers must determine whether a given jurisdiction adopted this writ or moved directly to general replevin.
The key trap for corpus researchers is assuming continuity. By the time American courts consolidated procedure — and certainly after the merger of law and equity under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) and equivalent state reforms — de averiis replegiandis had no independent procedural life. What survived was the substantive right to recover wrongfully taken or distrained property, now pursued under replevin or claim-and-delivery statutes.
When this term appears in a research source, it is almost always a signal that the author is working from or describing the older writ-based system. Use it to date and situate the authority, not to import procedural rules.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines the term tersely: "A writ to replevy beasts," citing Blackstone's Commentaries at 3 Bl. Comm. 149. This is characteristic of Black's treatment of ancient writs — the entry records existence and source rather than elaborating doctrine.
Blackstone himself, at the cited location, treats the writ as part of his survey of the personal actions available at common law, grouping it with the broader discussion of replevin. His account confirms that the writ's function was to compel the release of distrained animals while the parties litigated the lawfulness of the taking.
Historical dictionaries are largely silent beyond this level of detail, which is itself informative: the writ was well enough known among practicing lawyers in the era of the forms of action that extended treatment was unnecessary, but it generated little doctrinal development of its own. Its interest to later legal historians lies less in any complexity of its elements than in what it reveals about how the common law treated distrained livestock as a category warranting its own specific procedural remedy — a reflection of the agrarian economy in which the writ system developed.
Jurisdictional Note
The writ was an English common law form. American jurisdictions varied in their reception of specific writ forms, and many moved quickly to statutory replevin without formally adopting or abolishing the older writ. Research into any specific American jurisdiction requires checking whether the writ was ever locally recognized or whether general replevin absorbed its function from the outset.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Replevin; Forms of Action; Distress and Distraint.