Definition
De warrantia chartae (Latin: "of the warranty of the charter") was a common law writ available to a feoffee — a person who had received a grant of land — when the charter of feoffment by which the land was conveyed contained a clause of warranty. If the feoffee was subsequently sued in an assize or other action to recover the land, and the procedural posture of that action did not allow him to vouch the feoffor into warranty (that is, to formally call the grantor to defend the title), he could bring this separate writ against the feoffor or the feoffor's heir to compel performance of the warranty obligation. The writ functioned as an enforcement mechanism for the personal covenant of warranty running from grantor to grantee, compelling the warrantor to defend or, upon loss, to yield land of equal value in exchange.
The writ has been abolished and is of purely historical significance.
___
Common Confusion
De warrantia chartae is sometimes loosely grouped with voucher to warranty, but the two operated differently. Voucher was a procedural device used within an existing action — the defendant called the warrantor into that same suit to defend the title. De warrantia chartae was a separate, independent writ brought when voucher was procedurally unavailable, such as in assizes where the forms of action did not permit vouching. The writ was thus the remedy of last resort for enforcing a warranty covenant when the ordinary in-action mechanism was foreclosed.
___
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in early English common law sources — principally the Registrum Brevium (Register of Writs) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium — and in treatises discussing the medieval law of real property and warranty of title. Researchers will encounter it in historical analyses of feudal tenure, warranty covenants, and the development of real actions.
Several navigational points deserve attention:
First, the writ belongs to a family of abolished real actions. English law swept away most of these writs in the nineteenth century, and American jurisdictions largely never adopted them or replaced their functions with covenant or warranty deed doctrines. Finding modern parallels requires pivoting to the law of title warranty and breach of warranty covenants in deeds — a very different procedural context.
Second, the Black's entry cites the Registrum Originale (Reg. Orig.) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium — both standard medieval writ-book sources. Researchers working in primary sources should understand that these texts catalog the forms and availability of writs rather than explain doctrine in analytical depth. Treatises such as Bracton and later Coke's Institutes provide the underlying doctrinal context.
Third, the Latin form of this term varies across historical sources. Spellings include de warrantia chartae, de garantia cartae, and variant combinations. When searching historical indexes or digests, check multiple spellings.
Fourth, the concept of warranty running from feoffor to feoffee connects directly to the broader development of covenants of title in conveyancing — a lineage traceable forward into modern title insurance and deed warranty clauses. Researchers tracing that evolution should treat de warrantia chartae as the medieval procedural ancestor of the modern warranty deed covenant.
___
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the essential definition: a writ available to the feoffee who cannot vouch to warranty in the pending action, enabling him instead to proceed against the feoffor or heir by separate suit. The entry cites Registrum Originale 157b and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium 134D — both primary writ-register sources — and notes the writ's abolition.
These historical sources agree that the writ's availability was triggered by two conditions: (1) an existing clause of warranty in the original charter of feoffment, and (2) the procedural unavailability of voucher in the action by which the feoffee was being challenged. The writ thus had a narrow and specific function within the medieval real actions system.
What historical dictionary entries do not illuminate is the relationship between this writ and the underlying theory of feudal warranty — the idea that a lord who granted land assumed an obligation to defend the grantee's seisin, and that failure to defend obligated the lord to yield substitute land. That theoretical grounding is better pursued in Coke's Institutes and in academic histories of English land law. The dictionary entries treat the writ as a procedural form; the doctrine behind it requires deeper source work.
___
Jurisdictional Note
De warrantia chartae was an English common law writ and was formally abolished in England. American jurisdictions did not adopt this writ as a live procedural form; the warranty obligations it enforced were subsumed into deed covenant doctrine and later title insurance practice. The term has no operative significance in any current jurisdiction.
___