Definition
A historical common law writ that directed the release of a person imprisoned for the offense of re-disseisin, upon payment of a reasonable fine to the Crown. The phrase is Law Latin meaning, roughly, "for taking a fine for re-disseisin." The writ operated as a mechanism of conditional release: rather than remaining imprisoned as punishment for the aggravated land wrong, the offender could secure freedom by satisfying a monetary penalty. It belongs to the broader family of original writs governing real property disputes and their penal consequences under medieval English land law.
Common Confusion
This writ is easily conflated with the underlying action for re-disseisin itself, or with writs of novel disseisin. The distinction matters: novel disseisin addressed the initial wrongful dispossession of a freeholder; re-disseisin was a separate and aggravated offense — the act of dispossessing the same person again after they had been restored by judgment. De fine pro redisseisina capiendo did not adjudicate title or possession at all. It operated only at the back end of the process, addressing the imprisonment that followed a finding of re-disseisin, and providing the mechanism by which that imprisonment could be commuted to a fine.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in sources treating the register of original writs and the procedural machinery of medieval real actions. Researchers encountering it in historical records or early common law texts should understand several things.
First, the writ presupposes a prior judgment. It is not a standalone remedy but a downstream writ — it only becomes relevant after a court has found re-disseisin and imprisonment has followed. Tracing its use therefore requires working backward through the record to the underlying re-disseisin proceeding.
Second, the term appears in severely abbreviated or contracted form in manuscript sources and early printed registers. The "CA" in the entry header reflects exactly this kind of abbreviation — likely standing for "capiendo" — which was standard in the Registrum Brevium and similar formularies. Researchers working with original writs should expect truncation and should not assume a writ is unidentified simply because it does not appear spelled out in full.
Third, this writ sits at the intersection of real property law and criminal or quasi-criminal procedure. The imprisonment for re-disseisin was not purely civil; it carried a punitive dimension reflecting the Crown's direct interest in preventing the circumvention of judicial process. The fine paid under this writ went to the Crown, not to the dispossessed party. Researchers tracing the development of contempt-adjacent sanctions or the relationship between civil land judgments and penal consequences will find this writ relevant to that genealogy.
Fourth, the practical disappearance of real actions from English practice by the nineteenth century means this writ had no meaningful post-medieval life. It will not appear in equity or common law reports from the modern era. Its research value is almost entirely in understanding the structure of the medieval and early modern writ system.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the foundational entry, characterizing this as a writ lying "for the release of one imprisoned for a re-disseisin, on payment of a reasonable fine," with reference to the Registrum Brevium at folio 222b. Burrill's citation to the Registrum Originale is the standard anchor for any writ of this period, as the register was the authoritative official collection of approved writ forms. No other dictionary in the Law Mind corpus carries a distinct entry for this writ, which reflects how narrow and archaic its application was even by the time the major legal dictionaries were compiled. Burrill captures the functional description accurately but does not expand on the constitutional or procedural context of re-disseisin as an aggravated offense or explain why imprisonment — rather than damages alone — attached to it. Researchers needing that context must turn to Bracton, Britton, or Coke's treatment of the real actions rather than to the dictionary literature.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is wholly English in origin and has no American common law analog. American courts never adopted the real actions in their medieval form, and re-disseisin as a distinct penal offense did not transplant to the colonies. The writ is of no operative significance in any current jurisdiction.