Definition
A Latin term from the common law of ecclesiastical presentation meaning to impede, hinder, or obstruct another person's right to present a candidate to a church living or benefice. The term captures the act of wrongfully interfering with a patron's right of advowson — the right to nominate a clergyman to fill a vacant ecclesiastical office.
More precisely, to impedire was to interpose oneself into another's legal right of presentation: to act as though one had a claim to nominate, with some color of right and a quasi-seisin of the advowson, thereby blocking the true patron from exercising that right. The concept is inseparable from the writ and action of quare impedit, in which a plaintiff patron demanded to know why the defendant impeded his presentation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The English verb "impede" means to obstruct, hinder, or slow the progress of something or someone.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "To impede" — to hinder; to stop in progress; to obstruct; from Latin impedire, literally to entangle the feet.
The ordinary sense of the word — to hinder generally — understates the technical legal content. In law, impedire carried specific, formal meaning: it described an unlawful interference with a recognized property-like right (advowson) through an act of wrongful presentation or claim, not mere physical obstruction or casual hindrance.
Common Confusion
Impedire is sometimes read as a general Latin synonym for any kind of legal obstruction or interference. This is incorrect. In English common law sources, impedire almost exclusively appears in the context of advowson disputes and the action of quare impedit. Researchers encountering the term in medieval or early modern pleading records should not import a generic obstructionist meaning; the term signals a specific ecclesiastical property action.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval and early modern English ecclesiastical law, or in records touching on church patronage disputes, will encounter impedire primarily as the operative verb in quare impedit pleadings and treatises. Bracton's formulation — quoted in Burrill — is the canonical definition and anchors the doctrinal meaning.
Several navigational points matter:
First, the term appears in its Latin form almost exclusively in pre-modern sources. Post-Reformation legal writing increasingly uses the anglicized phrasing ("impede," "disturbance of advowson") or refers directly to the quare impedit action by name. A researcher scanning Year Books, Bracton, Fleta, or early plea rolls will encounter impedire; a researcher in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century equity reports is more likely to see the action described without the Latin verb.
Second, the quasi-seisin element in Bracton's definition is critical and easy to miss. Impedire was not mere passive obstruction; it required that the interfering party act with some color of right to the advowson — as if they had a claim to present. This distinguishes it from simple trespass or nuisance in ecclesiastical contexts.
Third, the Law Mind corpus connections run directly to advowson, quare impedit, and the broader doctrine of rights in ecclesiastical presentation. Researchers should trace the term through those entries rather than treating impedire as a standalone concept.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary shelf source for this term, and his entry is characteristically lean: a Latin gloss, a functional definition, and the Bracton citation. The entry quotes Bracton's fol. 247 formulation directly, which is the standard locus for the term in English legal literature. The cross-reference to Fleta (lib. 5, c. 16, § 2) confirms the term's grounding in the systematic treatise tradition of the thirteenth century.
Burrill's approach is accurate as far as it goes, but it offers no procedural context — no explanation of how impedire connected to the actual writ practice or to the remedies available. Researchers relying solely on Burrill's entry will have the technical meaning but not the procedural architecture within which the concept operated. The entry also cross-references Impedit (the noun/gerund form), which is worth following; quare impedit takes its name from that form and is the principal vehicle through which impedire acquired legal consequence.
No other source dictionaries in the present corpus provide an independent entry for impedire, so Burrill's account stands without corroboration or contradiction here.
Jurisdictional Note
Impedire and the action of quare impedit are English common law concepts rooted in the ecclesiastical patronage system. They have no operative equivalent in American law, where the established church and the advowson system were not transplanted. American legal researchers will encounter the term only in historical English sources or in comparative ecclesiastical law materials.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Quare Impedit; Advowson; Ecclesiastical Presentation