Definition
De oorrodio habendo (literally, "for having a corody") is an obsolete common law writ directed against a religious house or ecclesiastical institution, compelling it to provide a corody — that is, a stipend, pension, or allowance of food, lodging, or other provision — to a person legally entitled to receive it. The writ functioned as an enforcement mechanism for corody rights, which arose when the Crown or another grantor had supplied funds or land to a religious house on the condition that the house maintain a nominated person in perpetuity or for a fixed term.
The writ belongs to the family of original writs issued out of Chancery to initiate a common law action and would be directed to the sheriff commanding him to compel the religious house to satisfy the claimant's entitlement. It did not create the right to a corody; it enforced a pre-existing grant or customary obligation.
Common Confusion
De oorrodio habendo is sometimes encountered alongside references to corody generally without distinction between the underlying right and the procedural writ. The writ is the remedy; the corody is the substantive entitlement. A researcher who finds a reference to "corody proceedings" in older materials should determine whether the source is describing the right itself, the writ to enforce it, or a related action for its recovery. The variant spelling "De Corrodio Habendo" reflects the more common Latin orthography; "oorrodio" appears to represent a scribal or early print variant preserved in certain register copies.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively encountered in pre-Reformation ecclesiastical and Crown records, Year Books, and early registers of original writs. Several research traps apply:
First, the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII effectively ended the institutional context in which this writ operated. After the mid-sixteenth century, religious houses as defendants ceased to exist in England, making the writ functionally dead. Researchers working in post-Reformation common law sources will not find this writ in live use.
Second, the spelling instability is significant. Black's renders the term with the double-o prefix ("oorrodio"), but the standard Latin form in most registers and treatise citations is "corrodio" or "corrodium." Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium and the Registrum Omnium Brevium use forms that vary across manuscript and printed editions. A keyword search in digitized sources must account for these orthographic variants.
Third, the writ connects to a cluster of related Crown prerogative rights over religious houses. The right to nominate a corody recipient was often a royal prerogative incident to having founded or endowed the house. Researchers tracing Crown-church property relations in medieval English legal history will find this writ adjacent to questions of advowson, patronage, and mortmain — not merely private pension law.
Fourth, the reference to "Gobodt" in the Black's entry (likely a cross-reference within the supplemental material) has not been independently verified as a standard authority. Researchers should treat it as an internal cross-reference within that dictionary edition rather than as a separately citable primary source.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides the sole dictionary-level source for this entry and offers a compact but sufficient definition: "A writ to exact a corody from a religious house," with citations to Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. orig. 264) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium (230). These are the standard register and treatise sources for original writ procedure in medieval English law. No modern legal dictionary carries this entry as a live term, which is consistent with its obsolescence.
The historical dictionaries do not address the procedural mechanics of how the writ was prosecuted once issued, nor do they discuss what remedies followed noncompliance by the religious house. For that level of detail, researchers would need to consult the Year Books directly or Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium in full text rather than the summary citation in Black's.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ was exclusively an instrument of English common law and has no meaningful equivalent or parallel development in Scottish, Irish, or American law. American legal sources occasionally define the term for completeness but it never had operative significance in any American jurisdiction.