Definition
A writ of laborariis (also encountered as de laborariis) was a medieval English legal process directed against persons who refused to perform labor or render service. The writ operated in two principal circumstances: first, against individuals who had no means of support and yet refused to work; and second, against laborers who had worked during the winter season but refused to continue their service through the summer. The writ was a tool of compulsory labor enforcement, reflecting the broader legal framework constructed in the aftermath of the Black Death to control the movement and conduct of the laboring classes.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow, historically bounded term with no modern legal equivalent. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in studies of medieval English labor law, early writs practice, or the enforcement machinery of the Statute of Laborers (1351) and related legislation. Its appearance in legal sources is typically a marker of pre-modern labor regulation, not a concept with any living procedural application.
The sole citation across all three source dictionaries — Reg. Orig. 189 — refers to the Registrum Omnium Brevium, the official register of writs used by English courts of chancery. Researchers consulting this term in historical legal dictionaries should be aware that the Rapalje & Lawrence entry is corrupted in the source text: the entry for laborariis is cut off and runs directly into a partial entry for LACHES, indicating a typographical or binding error in the edition sampled. Do not treat the Rapalje & Lawrence entry as complete.
Because this writ predates systematic law reporting, corpus researchers will find it referenced in treatises, writ registers, and secondary histories of English labor law rather than in reported cases. It does not appear in equity or chancery practice after the early modern period, and it has no American counterpart. Researchers working on the history of employment law, master and servant doctrine, or vagrancy law may find laborariis relevant as a doctrinal ancestor, but it should not be cited as operative authority in any jurisdiction.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three dictionaries provide substantively identical definitions, each following the language of the Registrum Omnium Brevium closely. The consistency across Black's first and second editions and Rapalje & Lawrence confirms this was a settled historical description rather than a contested term. No source offers more than one sentence of explanation, which accurately reflects the writ's narrow and obsolete character.
None of the historical sources contextualize the writ within the Statute of Laborers framework, which is the essential backdrop for understanding its purpose. The statutory compulsion of labor following the plague of the 1340s created a body of enforcement mechanisms — of which laborariis was one — designed to prevent workers from abandoning their posts or refusing service at customary (pre-plague) wages. The dictionaries record the writ without explaining this context, which limits their usefulness for researchers seeking to understand the writ's function rather than merely its form.
Jurisdictional Note
Laborariis was an English writ with no American reception. It belongs entirely to the pre-modern English common law and has no counterpart in any American jurisdiction, colonial or post-independence.