Definition
De clauso fracto is a Latin phrase meaning "of close broken" or "of breach of close." It is the descriptive designation for the old common law writ and action used to recover damages for unlawful entry onto enclosed or bounded land. The phrase names the wrong itself — the breaking of a close — and appears most commonly as a shorthand reference to the action of quare clausum fregit, the formal writ by which a plaintiff alleged that the defendant had broken his close (that is, trespassed upon his land).
The term does not stand alone as an independent writ name but functions as a characterizing phrase identifying the subject matter of the action. When historical sources catalog writs "de clauso fracto," they are pointing to the family of trespass actions founded on unlawful entry onto land.
Common Confusion
De clauso fracto is frequently encountered as a compressed reference to the full writ name quare clausum fregit ("wherefore he broke the close"), and the two are sometimes used interchangeably in older texts. They are not identical: quare clausum fregit is the formal writ designation, including its interrogative framing, while de clauso fracto is the descriptive label for the category of wrong. Researchers should also distinguish this action from general trespass vi et armis, which addressed personal injury or chattel interference, and from trespass quare vi et armis clausum fregit et bona asportavit, which combined the breaking of close with the carrying away of goods.
Why It Matters in Research
De clauso fracto appears in historical writ registers, pleading books, and early case reporting as a shorthand label rather than a standalone doctrine. Researchers working in common law pleading history, real property trespass, or the forms of action will encounter the phrase in indexes and marginalia referring them onward to the main treatment under clausum fregit or quare clausum fregit. Missing this cross-reference pattern can cause researchers to dead-end.
The phrase is essentially extinct in modern practice. Contemporary trespass to land doctrine has shed the formal writ structure entirely, and no modern pleading employs this Latin designation. Its research value is therefore almost exclusively historical: it marks a path through early English legal sources, Registers of Writs, and the Year Books into the body of law governing unlawful entry onto land.
When using historical dictionaries that index under D, be alert to the fact that Burrill and Black both dispatch the term with a brief definition and an immediate cross-reference to clausum or clausum fregit. This is deliberate — the substantive law lives under those headings. De clauso fracto is an access point, not a destination.
The phrase also appears in contexts where historical writers catalog writs by subject matter rather than by formal name. In those catalogs, de clauso fracto groups together writ variations that share the feature of a broken close, including cases where additional wrongs (goods taken, buildings destroyed) were pleaded alongside the entry. Recognizing the phrase as a category label rather than a single writ prevents misreading of these organizational schemes.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries treat de clauso fracto identically: a three-to-five word gloss followed by a cross-reference. Black's first and second editions give "of close broken; of breach of close" and redirect to clausum. Burrill matches this definition and redirects to clausum fregit. There is complete agreement across sources — which itself signals that the phrase is a purely organizational term, not a contested or evolving legal concept.
Burrill's placement of the entry is notable. Immediately following de clauso fracto, Burrill catalogs de cartis reddendis (writ for redelivering charters) and de catallis reddendis (writ for rendering chattels), with citations to the Registrum Omnium Brevium and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium. This neighborhood in the writ catalog reveals the organizational logic of historical writ registers: writs were grouped by the subject of the wrong alleged, and the de clauso fracto heading served as a pointer to the trespass-to-land cluster within that system.
Historical sources do not diverge on meaning here, but they uniformly omit procedural detail, leaving the researcher to pursue it under the cross-referenced headings.
Jurisdictional Note
De clauso fracto and the underlying action of quare clausum fregit were received into American common law practice in the colonial and early national periods and appear in early American pleading treatises. The phrase itself, however, has no living jurisdictional significance — modern trespass to land actions in all U.S. jurisdictions proceed without reference to the writ forms.