Definition
De non residentia clerici regis (Latin: "concerning the non-residence of the king's clerk") is an ancient English writ that excused and discharged a parson — a clergyman holding a benefice — from the canonical and legal obligations of personal residence at his parish when he was employed in the service of the Crown. The writ operated as a formal exemption, relieving the clergyman of the penalties and duties that would otherwise attach to his absence from his living.
In medieval English law, a parson was generally required to reside within his parish and personally discharge its spiritual duties. Absence without lawful excuse could expose him to ecclesiastical censure and legal consequences bearing on the revenues of the benefice. Where the king had employed the clergyman in royal service — as a royal administrator, diplomat, or officer of the Crown — the writ of de non residentia clerici regis provided the formal legal mechanism by which that royal employment justified and excused the non-residence. It was, in effect, the Crown's warrant that the clergyman's absence was in the public interest and therefore not actionable.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal materials — writs registers, Year Books, and commentaries on ecclesiastical and crown administration from the medieval and early modern periods. Researchers encountering it should understand it as sitting at the intersection of two overlapping legal systems that characterized medieval England: the common law courts of the Crown and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Church. The writ is a concrete illustration of how the Crown intervened to protect its own administrative apparatus from competing ecclesiastical discipline.
The primary trap for researchers is treating this as a purely ecclesiastical instrument. It is a royal writ — issued from the king's court — and its significance lies in what it reveals about the relationship between Crown service and church discipline. Researchers working on the history of benefit of clergy, royal administration, or the staffing of medieval royal government with clerical personnel will find this writ contextually important even where it does not appear by name.
Volume and page references in historical sources are sparse. Coke's Second Institutes at page 264 is the principal citation in the legal dictionary tradition, and researchers should go there first for the most authoritative early commentary. Because the writ belongs to a period when writs were the primary instrument of common law administration, it will also appear in registrum brevium materials and in treatments of the old writ system generally.
Do not expect to find this term in modern legal research contexts. It has no living procedural equivalent. Its research value is historical and doctrinal — useful for understanding how medieval law accommodated the dual role of clergy who served both church and state, and how the common law addressed conflicts between royal and ecclesiastical authority.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) defines the writ concisely as one "where a parson was employed in the royal service, etc., to excuse and discharge him of non-residence," citing 2 Coke's Institutes at 264. This is the entry's entire available dictionary record, and it is notably spare.
The definition is accurate as far as it goes but leaves the broader legal context implicit. It does not explain the system of benefice-holding and residence obligations against which the writ operated, nor does it situate the writ within the broader pattern of Crown-church relations that made such an instrument necessary. Researchers relying solely on Black's will understand what the writ did but not why it existed or how it fit within the legal architecture of its time.
The citation to Coke's Second Institutes is the entry's most valuable feature. Coke's commentary on the old writs and on the relationship between ecclesiastical and common law obligations remains the most accessible point of entry for serious research into this instrument's operation and scope.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is exclusively English in origin and application. It has no counterpart in American law, which did not inherit the medieval system of benefice-holding clergy subject to residence obligations enforceable at common law. Researchers working in colonial American legal history will not encounter it in domestic sources.