Definition
In old English law, a procedural obligation imposed on a distraining party who had been sued and had failed to deliver up the goods or cattle that had been distrained. The distrainor was required not only to formally justify or avow the taking of the distrained property, but also to provide surety — a pledge or security — guaranteeing that the distrained goods would be delivered. The term translates roughly from Law French as "to gage [pledge] delivery," and it describes the act of putting in a pledge to ensure that the distrained chattels would be returned or accounted for.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow, archaic procedural term of old English property and process law. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal materials — writs, plea rolls, and treatises dealing with the law of distress — and it is unlikely to appear in American sources at any stage of legal development.
The term surfaces in materials concerning the writ of replevin and related distress proceedings. In that context, the procedural sequence matters: a party who distrains goods to compel performance of some obligation must, when challenged, both avow the distress (assert legal justification for it) and gage delivery. Failure to do either had distinct procedural consequences. Researchers working through historical distress actions should track both obligations separately — the avowry and the gage of deliverance are related but not interchangeable steps.
Black's citation to Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium is the controlling secondary reference. Fitzherbert's work is a foundational treatise on English writs and should be the first stop for any researcher seeking deeper context. The passage cited (at the folio designated AM in the old editions) addresses distress procedure. Because Fitzherbert writes in a period when Law French was still operative in English pleading, researchers should expect the surrounding source material to require some facility with that register.
The term has no meaningful American legal life. The law of distress in American jurisdictions was substantially transformed by statute, and the specific procedural formalism of gacer de deliverance — rooted in writ practice and suretyship in replevin-adjacent proceedings — did not survive transplantation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among the standard shelf dictionaries. The definition is terse but sufficient: it identifies the context (the distrainor who has been sued and has not delivered the distrained cattle), states the dual obligation (avow the distress, and gage deliverance by putting in surety), and cites Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium as authority.
No significant divergence or elaboration appears across other standard historical legal dictionaries, likely because the term's narrow procedural application gave other compilers little occasion to treat it independently. Bouvier's Law Dictionary, which extensively covers distress-related terminology, addresses the broader law of distress and replevin but does not isolate this specific procedural term by name.
What the historical dictionaries do not fully convey is the relationship between this obligation and the broader writ system. The gage of deliverance operated within a structured sequence of pleading steps; Black's entry captures the requirement but not the procedural stakes of failing to meet it.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively English in origin and application. It reflects the writ-based procedural system of medieval and early modern English common law and has no recognized counterpart in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions.