Definition
Habendis post purgationem (Latin: "for having [his lands and goods] after purgation") is the name of a writ issued in favor of a clerk who had undergone canonical purgation — a formal oath-based procedure by which an accused clergyman cleared himself of criminal charges before an ecclesiastical court. Upon successful completion of purgation, the clerk was entitled to recover his temporalities: the lands, goods, and other temporal property that had been seized or withheld pending the proceeding. This writ directed the restoration of those properties.
The term belongs to the medieval English system of benefit of clergy, under which ordained clergymen accused of felonies were transferred from royal to church jurisdiction. Purgation was one of the canonical mechanisms by which such a clerk could secure acquittal in the ecclesiastical forum. The writ of habendis post purgationem was the procedural instrument that translated that ecclesiastical result back into the temporal sphere, compelling return of the clerk's property.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources — primarily writs, rolls, and treatises from the medieval and early modern periods when benefit of clergy remained an operative doctrine. Researchers encountering the term in Year Books, ecclesiastical records, or Chancery rolls should understand that it represents the intersection of two parallel court systems: the royal common law courts and the ecclesiastical courts of the Church of England.
The critical research trap is treating this writ in isolation. Its meaning is inseparable from two surrounding concepts: benefit of clergy (the jurisdictional privilege that sent clerks to church courts) and canonical purgation (the specific ecclesiastical acquittal procedure that triggered the right to this writ). Without grounding in both, the writ's function is opaque.
By the later medieval period, benefit of clergy had expanded well beyond ordained clergy to include anyone who could read — a functional literacy test administered in court. However, the writ of habendis post purgationem remained tied to the more formal purgation procedure rather than the simplified royal court process that eventually displaced it. Researchers working in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources may find the doctrine in transition or decline, as Parliament progressively curtailed benefit of clergy by statute beginning in the Tudor period, and purgation as a distinct procedural step was increasingly bypassed.
No direct American legal analog exists. The doctrine did not transplant meaningfully into colonial or early American law. Researchers working in American legal history who encounter this term are almost certainly dealing with a source discussing English legal history or antiquities.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides a spare but accurate entry: "A writ for a clerk to recover his lands, goods" following purgation. The entry is fragmentary in its surviving form but captures the essential function — restoration of temporal property to the clerk who successfully purged himself.
Black's entry is consistent with what can be reconstructed from broader treatments of benefit of clergy in historical legal literature. Older English legal dictionaries and treatises — including those of Giles Jacob and William Rastell — addressed the related machinery of benefit of clergy and ecclesiastical purgation in greater detail, though the specific writ form was a procedural detail within a larger doctrinal apparatus. What historical dictionaries collectively tend to underemphasize is the administrative dimension: that the restoration of a clerk's temporalities required active writ process, not merely the fact of purgation, signaling that the royal courts retained control over the property consequence even when jurisdiction over the person had shifted to the church.
---
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is exclusively an English legal instrument. It has no counterpart in Scottish, Irish, or American legal systems. Researchers should treat it as a source for English ecclesiastical and common law history only.
---