Definition
A writ of medieval English law directing the delivery of a convicted clerk — that is, a clergyman or person claiming clerical status — from secular custody to the custody of his ordinary (the relevant ecclesiastical authority, typically a bishop). The writ gave effect to the doctrine of benefit of clergy, which exempted those in holy orders from the full force of secular criminal punishment by transferring jurisdiction over their persons to the church courts. The Latin phrase translates roughly as "for delivering a convicted clerk."
The writ operated at the intersection of royal and ecclesiastical jurisdiction: once a defendant successfully claimed clerical status and was "convicted" in the sense of having the claim adjudicated, the secular court was bound to surrender him to church authority rather than proceed to secular sentence. The writ was the procedural mechanism that compelled that transfer.
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Common Confusion
This writ is closely connected to, but should not be confused with, the broader doctrine of benefit of clergy itself. The doctrine describes the substantive privilege; DE CLERICO CONVICTO DELIBERANDO is the specific procedural instrument used to enforce the transfer of custody. Researchers may also encounter the related writ form referenced in Burrill under AD DELIBERANDUM CLERICUM, which appears to address the same underlying procedure from a slightly different procedural posture. These writs should be treated as part of the same procedural family rather than as distinct remedies.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is of almost exclusively historical significance. Researchers will encounter it primarily in the context of medieval and early modern English criminal procedure, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the gradual statutory erosion of benefit of clergy from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries.
Several traps await the unwary researcher. First, the writ's name is sometimes truncated or varied in historical sources. Burrill's entry itself is abbreviated — "RANDO, &c., Breve" — pointing to the fuller form and directing researchers to Fitzherbert's Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig. 69) for the complete writ. Any researcher working from secondary summaries alone risks missing variants of the writ name used in original records.
Second, the underlying concept of "conviction" in this context does not carry its modern meaning. Here, a clerk could be "convicted" of the charge before the secular court yet still claim the privilege — the conviction triggered the delivery process rather than foreclosing it. Reading this term through a modern lens of finality will produce a fundamental misunderstanding of the procedure.
Third, because benefit of clergy was progressively limited by statute — extended to laymen, restricted by offense category, and ultimately abolished in England in 1827 — the relevance and availability of this writ shifted substantially across the centuries. The writ's practical operation in a fifteenth-century source is not the same as its operation (or obsolescence) in an eighteenth-century source.
For corpus researchers, the connection to Registrum Omnium Brevium is significant: that register is the primary source for the formal writ text, and Burrill's cross-reference is the critical navigational pointer.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides only a brief cross-reference entry: "RANDO, &c., Breve. See Ad deliberandum clericum, Reg. Orig. 69." This compression is notable. Burrill treats DE CLERICO CONVICTO DELIBERANDO as sufficiently self-explanatory to require only a directional pointer to the Registrum Originale (Reg. Orig.), the standard compilation of original writ forms, and to the related writ heading AD DELIBERANDUM CLERICUM.
No substantive gloss is offered, which reflects the writ's status as a technical instrument of a well-understood (in its era) procedural doctrine rather than a contested legal concept. Researchers should not interpret Burrill's brevity as an indication that the term is minor — the writ was a routine and essential part of English criminal procedure for several centuries. The brevity reflects the assumption of a legally educated readership already familiar with benefit of clergy.
Historical dictionaries generally do not disagree on the core function of this writ, as its operation was mechanical rather than interpretive. What the historical sources collectively omit is any account of how the writ declined — the statutory history is not captured in writ-form registers or dictionary entries.
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Jurisdictional Note
This writ was a feature of English law exclusively. American colonial practice nominally inherited benefit of clergy, but the writ form itself had no formal transplantation into American procedure. Researchers working in American colonial criminal records who encounter benefit of clergy claims will find no parallel writ mechanism — the privilege was applied more informally, and it was abolished by federal statute in 1790 and eliminated progressively across state jurisdictions thereafter.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Benefit of Clergy; Ecclesiastical Courts; Original Writs.
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