Definition
A writ of exchange of money. De escambio monetz was an ancient common law writ authorizing a merchant to draw a bill of exchange — that is, to direct a third party to pay a specified sum of money to a designated payee. The writ functioned as a formal legal authorization for merchants engaged in international or long-distance trade to create instruments of credit in lieu of physically transporting coin or currency.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical sources treating medieval and early modern English commercial law. Researchers encountering it in primary sources should treat it as a marker of antiquity: its presence in a document signals pre-modern commercial practice predating the general acceptance of bills of exchange as self-executing instruments of mercantile custom. By the time bill of exchange law was regularized in English law — and certainly by the time of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 — this writ had long since fallen into disuse. No modern statutory or common law doctrine uses this term.
The practical significance of the writ was transitional: it reflects a period when merchants required royal or judicial authorization to engage in what later became routine commercial paper transactions. Researchers working in records from the Chancery, the Exchequer, or early commercial courts may encounter references to this writ in connection with merchant petitions or licensing arrangements. The reference in the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig. 194) is the authoritative locus classicus, and researchers tracing the writ's form should consult that source directly.
Do not expect to find this writ treated in depth in modern commercial law encyclopedias or treatises. Its research value is almost entirely historical and contextual — as evidence of how medieval English law mediated between the formal royal writ system and the emerging needs of merchant finance.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines de escambio monetz as "a writ of exchange of money" and notes its function as authorizing a merchant to make a bill of exchange (literas cambitorias facere), citing Reg. Orig. 194. This is the standard entry replicated across historical legal dictionaries, and no meaningful divergence among sources exists — the term is sufficiently obscure that most historical dictionaries either reproduce the Black's formulation or omit the term entirely.
The Latin phrase literas cambitorias facere ("to make letters of exchange") is instructive: it confirms that the writ's function was not to effect the exchange itself but to authorize the creation of the written instrument through which the exchange would occur. This distinction — between the authorization and the instrument — reflects the medieval legal structure in which commercial activity required a formal legal predicate before it could proceed.
Black's treatment is brief and derivative of earlier English legal lexicography. Researchers should not expect elaboration beyond the Registrum citation. Termes de la Ley and similar early modern English law dictionaries do not appear to carry independent treatments of this writ.