Definition
Gensis parliamenti (also rendered genesis parliamenti in some sources) refers to old English writs by which knights of the shire and burgesses could recover their wages or allowances from their constituents when such payment had been refused. Members of Parliament in the medieval and early modern periods were entitled to compensation from the communities they represented for their attendance and service; the gensis parliamenti provided the legal mechanism to enforce that entitlement.
The term belongs to the body of obsolete parliamentary law governing the relationship between elected representatives and the localities that returned them to Parliament. It has no practical application in modern law.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in historical English parliamentary sources and in American law dictionaries that preserved English common law vocabulary, such as Rapalje & Lawrence. Researchers encountering the term in older treatises or digests should understand it as a procedural relic tied to the pre-modern English system of compensating parliamentary representatives — a practice abolished well before American independence and long superseded in English law.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry pairs gensis parliamenti with a note about "some writing" in a statute, citing 65 Me. 500. The juxtaposition is puzzling; the Maine reference appears to be a separate entry that was typographically run together in the original source. Researchers working with that dictionary should treat these as two distinct items and not assume a substantive connection between the parliamentary writ and the Maine authority.
The enabling statute reference — 35 Hen. VIII, c. 11 — anchors the writ in mid-Tudor English legislation (circa 1543). Any researcher tracing the writ's scope or limits should consult that statute directly rather than relying on dictionary summaries, as secondary sources at this period of parliamentary history are often compressed to the point of imprecision.
Because this writ has no American counterpart and no surviving practical function, it will not appear in case law or modern statutory materials. Its relevance to the Law Mind corpus is historical and definitional only.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence provide the only dictionary entry identified for this term. Their definition is characteristically compressed: "Old writs whereby knights of the shire and burgesses might have recovered their wages or allowance if it had been refused." The source statute cited (35 Hen. VIII, c. 11) is specific and appears reliable. No other standard historical dictionaries — including Jacob's Law Dictionary, Bouvier, or Black's early editions — carry a dedicated entry for gensis parliamenti by this spelling, which suggests the term was treated as sufficiently obscure even in the nineteenth century to require only incidental coverage.
The underlying practice — payment of wages to members of Parliament by their constituencies — is well documented in English constitutional history and was a functioning system from the medieval period through the Tudor era. The writ itself was one enforcement mechanism within that system. By the time American legal dictionaries were cataloguing such terms, the practice was centuries obsolete, preserved in legal vocabulary largely as a point of antiquarian completeness.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively English in origin and application. It has no American statutory or common law equivalent. American constitutional and legislative frameworks provide for congressional compensation from the federal treasury, not from local constituencies, rendering any analogical use of this concept inapt.