Definition
A Latin phrase meaning, literally, "for making a perambulation." In historical English law, *perambulatione facienda* refers to the writ or proceeding by which the boundaries of adjacent lands, parishes, or manors were formally walked and determined. The process involved the physical traversal of disputed boundary lines by appointed commissioners or officials, with the purpose of establishing or confirming where one parcel of land ended and another began. The term is most commonly encountered as a component of the fuller phrase *de perambulatione facienda* — the writ that authorized the perambulation itself.
The writ was a remedy in cases of boundary disputes between neighboring landowners, and its use was tied to the broader common law mechanisms for resolving questions of metes and bounds before those disputes matured into full actions over title or trespass.
Common Confusion
*Perambulatione facienda* is not a standalone writ designation in most historical sources — it is the operative phrase within the writ *de perambulatione facienda*, and the two forms are often used interchangeably in older legal texts. Researchers encountering the abbreviated form should treat it as a direct reference to that writ and its associated proceedings. The term should not be confused with general survey procedures or with the modern concept of boundary surveys conducted by licensed surveyors; the perambulation was a legal proceeding with formal authority, not merely a practical measurement exercise.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will almost never appear in isolation in the Law Mind corpus. Its practical function is as a pointer: any source using *perambulatione facienda* is operating within the framework of the writ *de perambulatione facienda*, and research should pivot immediately to that entry. Rapalje & Lawrence confirm this explicitly by cross-referencing rather than defining the term independently.
Researchers working in early American colonial land records, English common law pleading manuals, or ecclesiastical boundary disputes may encounter perambulation proceedings under this Latin designation or its English translation. The practice of beating the bounds — the parish ceremony of walking boundary markers — has deep overlap with the legal perambulation, and documents from both traditions may appear in the same archival collection without clear distinction between ceremonial and legally operative acts.
The writ fell into disuse as equity courts and statutory survey mechanisms displaced older common law boundary remedies. Sources from after the mid-eighteenth century are unlikely to use this term in an operative legal sense; appearances in later texts are generally historical or antiquarian.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence do not supply an independent definition for *perambulatione facienda*, directing readers instead to *de perambulatione facienda*. This economy of treatment is itself informative: by the time of that dictionary's compilation, the abbreviated form had no independent doctrinal standing and was understood solely as a fragment of the fuller writ designation. Researchers should not expect richer treatment from other historical dictionaries of comparable vintage — the term's appearance in legal literature is almost uniformly as a cross-reference anchor rather than a defined term in its own right.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: DE PERAMBULATIONE FACIENDA; METES AND BOUNDS; BOUNDARY DISPUTES (COMMON LAW)