Definition
Latin. "For counsel to be given" or "for advice to be rendered." A consideration clause used in the grant of an annuity, by which the grantor agrees to pay a recurring sum in exchange for the recipient's ongoing counsel or advice. The phrase identified the legal basis — the cause — upon which the annuity obligation rested. As a consideration, it signified not a past service already rendered but a future one promised: the annuitant's availability and willingness to provide counsel going forward.
Common Confusion
Pro consilio impendendo (counsel to be given — future) should not be confused with pro consilio impenso (counsel already given — past). The distinction is not merely grammatical. An annuity resting on past consideration raised different questions of enforceability in early common law than one promising a future service. Conflating the two when transcribing or interpreting historical instruments can misread the legal posture of the grant entirely.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase appears almost exclusively in early English common law records concerning annuities, and researchers encountering it in Year Books, plea rolls, or early chancery materials should understand two things: first, it is a consideration formula, not a substantive obligation — its presence tells you how the annuity was legally justified, not what the counsel actually consisted of; second, the phrase was a term of art that courts scrutinized carefully. Whether the consideration was sufficiently certain and valuable to support the grant was a live legal question in the period when Dyer and Croke report cases involving it.
Researchers working through early modern English property and contract records will find this consideration type declining sharply after the seventeenth century, as commercial consideration doctrine matured and nominal or indefinite undertakings like the promise of counsel grew harder to sustain. By the time standard legal dictionaries were being compiled in the nineteenth century, pro consilio impendendo had become a historical artifact rather than a living formula. If you see it in a document, you are almost certainly looking at a pre-1700 instrument or a treatise discussion of archaic annuity practice.
The phrase connects naturally to broader research on the law of annuities, the doctrine of consideration in early English contract law, and the use of Latin recitals in deeds and grants. It is also worth noting that annuities granted pro consilio impendendo were distinguishable from annuities granted pro consilio impenso — for counsel already given — a distinction that mattered for questions of enforceability and the nature of the obligation assumed.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only substantive treatment among standard shelf sources, defining the phrase as "for counsel or advice to be given" and characterizing it as "formerly a very common consideration for the grant of an annuity." Burrill's citations to Dyer and Croke Jacobi confirm the phrase's grounding in Tudor and early Stuart case law. The use of "formerly" in Burrill's entry is itself informative: by the mid-nineteenth century, when Burrill was writing, the phrase had passed out of active legal use and was treated as historical material even then. Other standard historical dictionaries — Jacob, Tomlins, Bouvier — do not appear to carry a dedicated entry, suggesting the term was already receding from general legal reference by the time those works were compiled or revised. Researchers should not expect cross-referencing support from those sources and should go directly to the early reporters Burrill cites.