Definition
Non impedivit (Law Latin: "he did not impede" or "he did not hinder or disturb") is the plea of the general issue in the common law action of quare impedit. When a defendant entered this plea, he denied the plaintiff's central allegation — that the defendant had impeded or disturbed the plaintiff's right to present a clerk to a church living or other advowson. Non impedivit is the Latin equivalent of the law French plea ne disturba pas, and the two terms are functionally identical.
The plea operates as a flat denial: the defendant puts the whole matter in issue by asserting, in effect, that he committed no wrongful interference with the plaintiff's presentment rights. The cause then goes to the country — that is, to a jury — for resolution on the facts.
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Common Confusion
Non impedivit is closely paired with non est factum, a different general-issue plea applicable to actions on written instruments. Burrill's entry appears to conflate or run together text from both pleas, reflecting a typographical or editorial error in that edition. Researchers encountering Burrill should note that the substantive description of non impedivit — "he did not hinder or disturb" in the action of quare impedit — is correct; the surrounding text concerning a writing obligatory belongs to non est factum and should be disregarded as a transcription artifact.
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Why It Matters in Research
Non impedivit is entirely a creature of the abolished common law writ system and will not appear in modern American or post-Judicature Act English practice as a live pleading. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in:
1. Historical English ecclesiastical and common law reports, particularly cases involving advowson disputes, patronage rights, and church livings — a body of law with virtually no modern American counterpart.
2. Common law pleading treatises and forms books from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Townshend's Precedents of Pleadings is cited by Burrill as a primary source). These works are the most reliable guides to the precise wording and procedural effect of the plea.
3. American cases from the colonial and early republic periods that imported English common law forms wholesale, before American courts abandoned quare impedit as a recognized action.
The key navigational trap is terminology drift. Researchers searching historical corpus sources for pleading denials in property or church-right disputes may find non impedivit, ne disturba pas, and non disturba used interchangeably across different periods and reporters. All three carry the same operative meaning; the variation reflects nothing more than the gradual displacement of law French by Latin in English legal records.
Because quare impedit itself was an action tied specifically to the English system of ecclesiastical benefices and advowson rights, non impedivit has no meaningful American successor plea. A modern researcher who encounters the phrase in an American context is almost certainly reading a historical forms manual, a legal history source, or an antiquarian treatise, not a living procedural rule.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The four historical dictionaries converge on the core meaning without meaningful disagreement: non impedivit is the general issue in quare impedit, denying the act of impediment alleged by the plaintiff. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence are consistent and reliable on this point. All three correctly identify the law French equivalent ne disturba pas.
Burrill's entry is the outlier — not because the definition is wrong, but because the surrounding text is garbled, apparently running together material from a separate entry (non est factum) in a way that obscures the standalone meaning of non impedivit. Researchers relying on Burrill for this term should treat the definition clause only ("he did not hinder or disturb... in the action of quare impedit") and discard the appended matter about a writing obligatory.
None of the historical sources provide substantive discussion of the procedural effect of the plea — specifically, that it joined the general issue and sent the cause to a jury — beyond bare identification. For full procedural context, Townshend's Precedents of Pleadings and the classical pleading treatises (Chitty, Stephen on Pleading) remain the necessary supplements.
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Jurisdictional Note
Non impedivit is exclusively an English common law form. American jurisdictions that recognized quare impedit in the colonial and early republic period borrowed it directly from English practice, but the action was never well established in American courts and fell into disuse well before the merger of law and equity. No American jurisdiction currently maintains quare impedit or its associated pleas as operative procedure.
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