Definition
A Latin term from old English practice meaning "to link together" or "interchangeably." The term describes a procedural mechanism by which multiple writs issued against separate parties in different counties were treated as interconnected — each writ summoning its named party to appear not alone, but together with (simul cum) the other parties named in the companion writs. Writs issued under this mechanism were called interlaqueata.
The context was warranty practice: where a tenant in a real action sought to compel several warrantors residing in different counties to defend his title, a single writ could not reach all of them. Instead, separate writs issued to each county, but each writ expressly joined the named warrantor to the others, creating a linked set. The writs functioned as a coordinated unit despite being formally distinct instruments served in distinct jurisdictions.
Common Confusion
Interlaqueare is closely associated with the simul cum writ, and Burrill notes explicitly that interlaqueata writs "were, in other words, simul cum writs." Researchers should not treat these as two separate procedural devices. The terms describe the same instrument from different angles: simul cum ("together with") describes the operative language within each writ; interlaqueare describes the conceptual effect of linking the writs together as a set. Black's entry omits this identification, which can leave the terms appearing more distinct than they were in practice.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a highly specialized term of medieval English real property procedure and will appear almost exclusively in pre-modern sources — primarily Year Books, Fleta, Bracton-era treatises, and early abridgments. It has no modern procedural counterpart and was obsolete well before American law developed. Researchers encountering the term in historical sources should understand it as a workaround for the county-based jurisdictional limits of the writ system: because a single writ ran only to a single county's sheriff, multi-county warranty cases required this linking mechanism to compel all warrantors into the same proceeding.
The primary pitfall is anachronism. Modern readers may instinctively map interlaqueata writs onto concepts like joinder of parties or consolidated service of process. The analogy is imprecise. The interlaqueata device was not a joinder rule in the modern sense — it did not bring parties into a single pleading unit so much as it coordinated parallel writs by formula, preserving the county-by-county structure of the old writ system while achieving a functional equivalence to joint compulsion.
Researchers tracing the history of multi-party process, warranty of title, or the structural limits of the original writ system will find this term useful as a marker. Its appearance in a source helps date and situate the procedural context: the term belongs to an era when personal jurisdiction was geographically tethered to the sheriff's bailiwick and when real actions for warranty were a primary vehicle for resolving competing land claims.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core definition and the procedural context, and all three cite the same authority: Fleta, lib. 5, c. 4, § 2. Fleta is a late thirteenth-century Latin treatise on English law, composed around 1290, and is a legitimate primary source for this period of procedure. The citation is consistent across Burrill and Bouvier, confirming it as the standard reference for this device.
Burrill provides the fullest treatment, adding the identification with simul cum writs and the explanatory gloss that each party was summoned "together with (simul cum) the other warrantors." This is the most instructive of the three entries for a researcher trying to understand the mechanism rather than merely the definition. Bouvier closely tracks Burrill's language. Black's entry is abbreviated to the point of being incomplete on its own.
None of the three dictionaries contextualizes the device within the broader structure of warranty practice or explains why cross-county writs presented a procedural problem in the first place. Researchers needing that context should consult Fleta directly or secondary treatments of real actions in medieval English law, such as Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law.
Jurisdictional Note
Interlaqueare is a term of English common law with no recognized American legal application. It does not appear in American statutory or case law as a live procedural concept. Researchers working in American legal history may encounter it only in treatises or dictionaries tracing English antecedents of procedural law.