Definition
Perdonatio utlagariae (Law Latin: "pardon of outlawry") is a formal pardon granted to a person who had been declared an outlaw — typically as a consequence of contempt for failing to obey or appear in response to court process — and who subsequently surrendered voluntarily to the court's authority. The pardon restored the individual's legal standing, reversing the civil and legal disabilities that outlawry imposed.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-modern English common law sources and will surface in historical pleading records, register of writs materials, and treatises on outlawry procedure. Researchers encountering perdonatio utlagariae in manuscript or early printed sources should treat it as a procedural endpoint in the outlawry sequence: the term signals that a prior outlawry had been reversed, not merely suspended.
The critical navigational point is that this pardon was conditioned on voluntary surrender. It is therefore distinct from a general royal pardon (which could be granted without surrender) and from a reversal of outlawry on procedural grounds. When tracing an individual's legal history in historical records, a perdonatio utlagariae entry indicates that the subject had previously been outlawed, which itself implies a prior failure to answer process — a fact of potential significance in understanding the underlying litigation or criminal proceeding.
The reference in Black's to Reg. Orig. 28 points to the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Register of Original Writs), the standard formulary of English writs. Researchers consulting that source will find the writ form used to effect the pardon. Because the Register of Writs was the operative reference for medieval and early modern English practitioners, this citation locates perdonatio utlagariae firmly within the writ-based pleading system rather than in statutory or equity practice.
This term will not appear in American legal sources after the colonial period in any operative sense. Outlawry as a formal legal mechanism was largely abandoned in American practice, and the concept has no continuing statutory life in most U.S. jurisdictions. Researchers working in early American colonial court records may encounter it, but it is primarily a term of English legal history.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the only dictionary entry in the Law Mind corpus for this term. The definition is spare but accurate: a pardon for one outlawed for contempt who surrenders voluntarily, with a citation to Reg. Orig. 28. The definition correctly identifies the two operative facts — prior outlawry for contempt of process, and voluntary surrender — as the conditions that distinguish this pardon from other forms of royal clemency.
Historical sources more broadly treat outlawry as a severe procedural sanction: the outlaw was said to be placed outside the king's peace, losing the protection of law. The perdonatio utlagariae was the formal mechanism by which that status was lifted upon surrender, restoring the person to legal capacity. Black's entry does not elaborate on what disabilities were lifted or the procedural steps following surrender, which limits its utility as a standalone research tool. Treatises such as Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae and Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England provide fuller accounts of the outlawry process and its reversal, though neither uses the precise phrase perdonatio utlagariae as a term of art in an indexed or glossary form.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively a term of historical English common law. It has no recognized equivalent in modern English, American, or Commonwealth legal systems. Researchers should treat it as operative only in the context of pre-nineteenth-century English legal materials.