Definition
A writ in old English real property practice that issued against a tenant who defaulted after having appeared in a real action. The parvum cape — Latin for "little cape" — directed the sheriff to take the land into the king's hands pending the tenant's answer. It was the counterpart to the magnum cape, which lay where the tenant had never appeared at all. The parvum cape was thus the remedy for a post-appearance default, not an initial absence.
Common Confusion
Parvum cape and magnum cape (grand cape) are frequently conflated because both are capias-style writs in real actions and both result in seizure of land. The critical distinction is timing: the magnum cape issued on a tenant's default before appearance; the parvum cape issued on default after appearance. The stage of proceedings controls which writ applied. Both are obsolete in modern practice, but researchers working with medieval and early modern real action records must distinguish them. All five historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus cross-reference parvum cape to petit cape — petit cape and parvum cape are the same writ, the English and Latin names for the same instrument.
Why It Matters in Research
Parvum cape is an archaic procedural term encountered almost exclusively in records of the old English real actions — the possessory and droitural actions (novel disseisin, mort d'ancestor, formedon, and the like) that were largely swept away by the Real Property Limitation Act 1833 and extinguished by the Common Law Procedure Act 1852. Researchers encountering the term in Year Books, Bracton, Fleta, or plea rolls should understand it as a stage-of-proceedings marker rather than a substantive remedy: it tells you where the parties stood in the litigation timeline.
The corpus cross-references between parvum cape and petit cape are worth tracking carefully. Historical sources use both Latin and Law French names interchangeably; a plea roll entry referencing "petit cape" and a treatise passage referencing "parvum cape" describe the same procedural event. Failure to recognize this equivalence can create apparent inconsistencies when synthesizing sources across time periods or across Latin and French textual traditions.
Researchers should also note that cape writs generally have no surviving procedural analog in modern common law jurisdictions. Any attempt to map them onto contemporary provisional remedies (attachment, sequestration, lis pendens) risks anachronism. The parvum cape was embedded in the freehold tenure system and the peculiar default rules of real actions; neither the writ nor its logic translates directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus are substantially in agreement on this term but offer thin coverage. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's treat parvum cape as a pure cross-reference, redirecting entirely to petit cape without independent definition. Rapalje & Lawrence does the same. Only Burrill's provides substantive content, defining the term as "a writ which lay on a tenant's default after appearance in a real action" and citing Roscoe's Real Actions and Fleta (lib. 6, c. 14, § 24) as authorities. Burrill's is therefore the anchor source for researchers who need more than a cross-reference.
The historical dictionaries do not explain the procedural mechanics in any depth — what the writ commanded the sheriff to do, what happened to the tenancy during the interim seizure, or how the tenant could re-enter. For that level of detail, primary sources (Bracton, Fleta, and Roscoe's treatise on real actions) remain necessary. The dictionaries also do not address the relationship between cape writs and essoins, though Burrill's adjacent entry on passage (pas) touches the essoin context tangentially.
Nothing in the historical dictionary record suggests any jurisdictional variation in the use of parvum cape; it was a creature of English common law real actions and did not transplant meaningfully to American practice, where real actions atrophied early in the colonial period.
Jurisdictional Note
Parvum cape was a writ of English common law and has no living counterpart in any modern jurisdiction. American courts abandoned real actions in favor of ejectment before the concept could take root, and English real actions were formally abolished in the nineteenth century. The term appears today only in historical legal research.