Definition
A writ directing that homage be respited — that is, postponed or delayed. In medieval English feudal practice, a tenant who owed homage to a lord was required to perform that ceremony of personal submission within a fixed period. De homagio respectuando issued to excuse or defer that obligation, typically when the tenant could show sufficient cause why performance should not be compelled immediately.
Why It Matters in Research
This is an obsolete feudal writ of narrow historical application. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English legal sources — Year Books, Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, and treatises on feudal tenure. It has no surviving practical significance in modern common law jurisdictions, where the feudal institution of homage has been entirely extinguished.
The chief research trap with this term appears in Rapalje & Lawrence, which conflates two entirely unrelated entries. After correctly defining de homagio respectuando as a writ for respiting homage, the entry immediately shifts — without explanation — into a description of the "general traverse" used in common law pleading. The general traverse definition that follows (describing a summary denial used in trespass, case, assumpsit, and replevin) bears no relation to the writ. This appears to be a typographical or editorial error in the original compilation, splicing together portions of two separate entries. Researchers relying on Rapalje & Lawrence for either topic should treat these as distinct entries and not read them as a unified definition.
For the writ itself, Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at folio 269 A is the controlling primary source. Both historical dictionaries cite it, and it remains the appropriate terminus for further research into the writ's scope and issuance conditions.
Researchers working in feudal tenure history should understand that homage — the ceremony by which a vassal personally acknowledged a lord's superiority — was both legally and symbolically significant in medieval English land law. Writs governing the timing of homage performance were therefore a recognized category of chancery relief. De homagio respectuando sits within that narrow category alongside other writs managing feudal obligations (such as those governing relief, fealty, and wardship).
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides a clean, accurate single-sentence definition tied directly to the Fitzherbert citation. It does not overreach.
Rapalje & Lawrence begins correctly but is corrupted by what appears to be an editorial splice, importing a discussion of the general traverse — a common law pleading device entirely unrelated to homage — into the same entry. This divergence between the two dictionaries is not a substantive disagreement about the writ; it is an artifact of editorial error in Rapalje & Lawrence. The general traverse material belongs elsewhere in the dictionary and should be disregarded in connection with this writ.
Neither source elaborates on the procedural circumstances under which de homagio respectuando would issue, what showing was required, or how it related to other homage-related writs. Fitzherbert is the primary authority for those details.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ was a creature of English feudal law and has no analog or surviving application in American jurisdictions, which never adopted the feudal tenure system in its full form. It appears only in historical English legal contexts.