Definition
A writ in English common law procedure directing a distraint against a former sheriff. The full Latin phrase reads *distringas nuper vicecomitem* — "distrain the late sheriff" — and it issued when a former sheriff had failed to return a writ or account for money collected during his term of office. The writ compelled compliance by authorizing seizure of the ex-sheriff's goods as coercive pressure.
The writ was a species of the broader *distringas* family — writs commanding a sheriff to distrain a person's goods to compel some act — but distinguished by its target: the officer's successor had replaced him, making an ordinary *distringas* to the current sheriff inappropriate. Because the current sheriff could not be ordered to distrain himself, and the former sheriff remained amenable to process, the *nuper vicecomitem* variant supplied the procedural gap.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English common law materials and in American treatises and form books that carried English practice forward into the early republic. Researchers encountering this writ in colonial or early American court records should understand that it signals a proceeding against an outgoing sheriff for delinquency in office — typically failure to return process, failure to pay over collected funds, or neglect of execution. It is not a writ against a private party.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry cross-references only to the general *distringas* entry, treating *nuper vicecomitem* as a subtype rather than an independent form. This is accurate but leaves the researcher to reconstruct the doctrinal context from the parent entry. Researchers using Law Mind sources should therefore treat any reference to this writ as a pointer back to the *distringas* entry for procedural mechanics, while recognizing that the target (a former officer) and the occasion (official delinquency) are the distinguishing features.
Because the writ operated within the English sheriff system and its American analogues, its relevance diminishes sharply after court reforms consolidated or replaced the sheriff's ministerial role in execution practice. By the mid-nineteenth century, statutory processes largely displaced these common law writs in most American jurisdictions. Encountering the term in sources after roughly 1850 likely signals either quotation from an older authority or practice in a jurisdiction that retained common law forms longer than average.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence (1883) treats *distringas nuper vicecomitem* not as a freestanding entry but as a cross-reference item under *distringas*, directing the reader to section 3 of that entry. This editorial choice reflects the understood status of the writ: it was a recognized variant, not a conceptually independent form. The compressed treatment is consistent with the writ's diminishing practical importance by the time Rapalje & Lawrence was compiled. Earlier English law dictionaries, including Jacob's *Law Dictionary* and Tomlin's *Law Dictionary*, discuss the *distringas* family more fully and confirm that *nuper vicecomitem* specifically addressed the procedural problem of a sheriff who had vacated office. No significant divergence exists among historical sources on the basic function of this writ; it is one of the more settled technical forms in the older common law vocabulary.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is a product of English common law and has no independent statutory analog in modern American law. Its presence in American materials reflects the reception of English practice in colonial and early federal courts. Jurisdictions that formally abolished common law writs by code reform — as most American states did in the nineteenth century — effectively retired this form by general operation of those reforms rather than by specific abolition.