Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning extracts or estreats — that is, certified copies or abstracts drawn from official records, particularly court or exchequer rolls, used to authorize collection of fines, fees, and other financial obligations. The term appears in two principal senses in historical sources:
1. Extracta scaccarii (also extracta de scaccario): Estreats of the exchequer; the extracted or copied records of financial obligations owed to the Crown, drawn from exchequer rolls and used to enforce collection.
2. Extracta curiae: The issues or profits arising from holding a court, encompassing customary dues, fees, and amercements — the financial yield a lord or official derived from the exercise of court jurisdiction.
Common Confusion
EXTRACTA and ESTREAT overlap substantially and are used interchangeably in some sources, but the relationship is one of genus and species. Estreat is the anglicized functional term for a certified extract used to levy a fine or forfeiture; extracta is the Latin antecedent and broader administrative designation covering all manner of extracted records and court profits. A researcher encountering extracta in a Latin document should not assume it refers solely to penal forfeitures — it may describe the full range of income derived from court proceedings.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research risk with extracta is treating it as a simple synonym for estreat when the context may be broader. In exchequer and manorial records, extracta curiae describes the aggregate financial return from court-holding — amercements, entry fines, suit-of-court fees, and other customary payments — not merely penal extracts. A researcher analyzing medieval or early modern estate records who reads extracta curiae as equivalent to criminal forfeitures will misread the economic character of the document.
The term appears almost exclusively in Latin legal and administrative records. It drops out of English legal usage as anglicized equivalents (estreat, issues, profits of court) take over. Researchers working in post-medieval sources will rarely encounter extracta directly, but understanding it is essential for reading the underlying Latin authorities — particularly Fleta and the Statute of Westminster II — that later commentators cite when discussing estreats and exchequer procedure.
Burrill's cross-reference to Hale's History of the Common Law and to Fleta is useful navigational intelligence: both sources provide institutional context for how extracta fit into the administrative machinery of revenue collection. The Statute of Westminster II (1285), chapter 8, is the key statutory hook for the exchequer dimension of the term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary historical source available for this entry and provides the essential structural breakdown: the distinction between extracta scaccarii (exchequer estreats) and extracta curiae (court profits). Burrill sources the exchequer usage to Hale's History of the Common Law and to Fleta (lib. 1, c. 20, § 101 and lib. 2, c. 13, § 13), and the court-profits usage to Cowell's legal dictionary. This triangulation across institutional sources (Hale for common law context, Fleta for medieval administrative practice, Cowell for definitional precision) reflects genuine consensus on the term's meaning.
What historical dictionaries do not fully address is the practical mechanics of how extracta were processed — how records were physically drawn off the rolls, certified, and transmitted to enforcement officers. For that procedural dimension, researchers must go beyond dictionary sources to the records themselves or to specialized scholarship on exchequer administration.
Jurisdictional Note
Extracta is a term of English legal history and does not have meaningful counterparts in American law. Its relevance is confined to research in English medieval and early modern administrative, manorial, and exchequer records.