Definition
De statuto stapulæ is the Latin name for the writ of statute staple — a common law writ directed to the sheriff commanding enforcement of a recognizance or bond entered into under the law of the staple. When a debtor who had acknowledged a debt under the staple system failed to pay, the creditor could sue out this writ to obtain execution against the debtor's lands, goods, and body without the need to proceed through ordinary common law pleading. The writ was part of a summary enforcement mechanism designed to give merchants swift recourse on commercial debts.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in early common law procedural sources and register of writs materials. Researchers encountering it in historical documents should understand it as a procedural artifact of the medieval English staple system — a network of designated towns where certain commodities (wool, leather, tin) were required to be sold and where special mercantile courts administered a merchant-specific body of law.
The writ's significance lies not in substantive law but in procedure: it bypassed the slower mechanisms of common law debt recovery. Researchers tracing the history of creditor remedies, commercial law, or summary execution will find de statuto stapulæ sitting alongside related writs such as elegit and the writ of extent as part of the same family of expedited enforcement tools available to creditors holding formally acknowledged debts.
Because the staple system was largely obsolete by the eighteenth century, this writ does not appear in American legal materials and has no modern domestic equivalent. References to it in American sources will be confined to treatises discussing English legal history or the evolution of commercial law. Researchers working with Registers of Original Writs — the primary source Black's cites for this entry — should note that the Registrum Omnium Brevium (the printed Register of Original Writs) is the authoritative guide to the formal writ system and is the document referenced as "Reg. Orig. 151" in Black's.
One navigational trap: the truncated entry in Black's 2nd Edition runs directly into the next entry (De Superoneratione Pasturæ) with the page reference "331," which can create confusion about whether the text is a continuation of this entry or a heading for the next. It is a heading break, not a continuation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Edition) provides the only dictionary treatment of this term in the Law Mind corpus, offering a single-sentence definition: "The writ of statute staple," with a citation to the Registrum Originale at folio 151. This entry is characteristic of Black's treatment of obsolete Latin writ names — bare identification rather than substantive explanation. No additional historical dictionary sources in the corpus expand on this entry.
The writ derives from the Statute of the Staple (27 Edw. III, stat. 2, 1353), which established the staple system and its associated legal machinery. Under that statute, merchants who acknowledged debts before the mayor of the staple were subject to summary enforcement, and the writ of statute staple was the mechanism by which that enforcement was carried into execution. The underlying statute also gave rise to the cognate term "statute staple" as a form of recognized debt instrument.
Historical sources on English mercantile law — including Blackstone's Commentaries and early treatises on the law merchant — discuss the staple system in substance, though they do not always isolate this specific writ by its Latin name. Researchers needing fuller context for the staple courts and their procedures will find more in those sources than in any dictionary entry.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ was a creature of English law and has no American equivalent. The staple system was never transplanted to the American colonies. Researchers encountering the term in any context other than English legal history can treat it as a historical reference only.