Definition
A writ of prohibition directing the sheriff not to levy or collect from certain landholders the allowance or wages payable to knights of the shire — the elected representatives sent to Parliament from each county. The writ protected tenants holding lands in ancient demesne from being assessed for the financial burden of supporting those knights' attendance. Lands held in ancient demesne were those recorded in the Domesday Book as belonging to the Crown at the time of the Conquest, and their tenants enjoyed particular privileges and immunities, including exemption from contributions of this kind. The writ issued out of Chancery and ran to the sheriff, who was otherwise responsible for collecting the levy from landholders within the county.
Common Confusion
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry conflates or runs together several distinct items under adjacent headings, and the text as it appears attributes a shortened label — "ANDIS, &c." — to what is the tail end of the full writ name, EXPENSIS MILITUM NON LEVANDIS. Researchers encountering the truncated form should understand they are dealing with the same writ. The confusion arises from the way alphabetical digest formats of the nineteenth century sometimes broke Latin phrases mid-entry or indexed them under interior words rather than the opening word.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost entirely to the medieval and early modern English legal world. It will not appear in American materials except as antiquarian reference, and it has no direct common law successor in United States practice. Researchers working in:
— Medieval English legal history: The writ connects directly to the constitutional and fiscal relationship between the Crown, Parliament, and the ancient demesne. Sources to consult are Bracton, the Register of Original Writs (Registrum Omnium Brevium), and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, not American digests.
— Ancient demesne research: The writ is one of several procedural tools that defined the practical content of ancient demesne tenure. It cannot be understood in isolation from writs like monstraverunt and de nativis, which together sketch the boundaries of what ancient demesne tenure meant in practice. A researcher who encounters this writ in a plea roll or formulary needs to understand the tenure context first.
— Parliamentary history: The allowance for knights of the shire was an early form of parliamentary wages — members were paid by their constituents rather than the Crown. This writ is therefore relevant to research on the financial mechanics of early Parliament and the obligations that attendance imposed on county landholders.
— Register of Original Writs: Rapalje & Lawrence cites Reg. Orig. 261 as the location of this writ's form. The Registrum Omnium Brevium is the principal primary source. Researchers should note that the pagination varies across editions, and the 1531, 1553, and 1687 printings do not share consistent folio references.
The term will not appear in Westlaw or Lexis in any operative sense. It surfaces in historical legal dictionaries, treatises on tenure, and scholarly editions of plea rolls and registers. Anyone finding it in a secondary source that is not historical in orientation should treat that use with suspicion.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence is the only shelf source providing an entry, and the entry itself is fragmentary — the text cuts off and runs into unrelated adjacent entries (EXPENSIVE and EXPLICATIO), which is a product of the dictionary's compressed format rather than any substantive connection among those terms. The citation to Reg. Orig. 261 is the entry's most useful content, pointing directly to the Register of Original Writs as the authoritative source for the writ's form.
Earlier English legal dictionaries, including Cunningham's Law Dictionary and Cowell's Interpreter, address ancient demesne tenure and associated writs with greater depth, though neither provides a dedicated entry for this writ by name. Jacob's Law Dictionary (various editions) similarly treats ancient demesne at greater length than Rapalje & Lawrence but does not isolate this writ as a primary entry. Blount's Nomo-Lexicon treats related demesne vocabulary. None of these sources updates the practical significance of the writ beyond its historical context, because none needed to — the writ had been obsolete for centuries before any of them were compiled.
What historical sources collectively miss: none situate the writ within the broader parliamentary wages question with any precision. That connection requires going outside the legal dictionary tradition to parliamentary history scholarship.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is entirely a creature of English law and has no counterpart in any American jurisdiction. It is relevant in American legal research only when tracing the historical roots of common law tenure concepts or when working with colonial-era materials that reference English writ practice.