Definition
A writ that issued alongside an exigent in old English law, commanding the sheriff of the county where a defendant resided to make three public proclamations at prominent locations — chosen for their likelihood of reaching the defendant — within one month before an outlawry could be pronounced. The proclamation served as a final notice mechanism: it gave the defendant a last opportunity to appear and answer before the extreme penalty of outlawry attached. Without this prescribed series of proclamations, the outlawry process was procedurally incomplete.
The term is a compound: "proclamation" refers to the public announcement itself, and "exigents" refers to the writ of exigent (also called exigi facias), which commanded the sheriff to demand the defendant's appearance at successive county courts. The proclamation of exigents was not the exigent itself, but an accompanying writ that imposed the notice requirement running parallel to the exigent process.
Common Confusion
The proclamation of exigents is easily conflated with the writ of exigent (exigi facias). They are distinct instruments. The exigent commanded repeated demands for the defendant's appearance across successive county court sessions; the proclamation of exigents commanded the sheriff to make public announcements in the defendant's county as a separate, contemporaneous warning. Both were required for a valid outlawry proceeding, but they operated through different channels — the exigent through the court process, the proclamation through public notice in the community.
Researchers should also avoid confusing this historical procedure with the modern doctrine of exigent circumstances in Fourth Amendment law. The two share a root word but are conceptually unrelated: one is a formal writ in a pre-modern English outlawry proceeding; the other is a judicially recognized exception to the warrant requirement in American constitutional law. See COMMON CONFUSION note under EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES.
Why It Matters in Research
This is an extinct procedural term. No modern legal system employs proclamations of exigents or the outlawry framework they supported. Researchers encountering this term will do so exclusively in historical sources: pre-nineteenth-century English case law, treatises rooted in Blackstone's Commentaries, and early American sources that reproduced English common law procedure before it was displaced by statutory reforms.
The primary research trap is keyword confusion. Searches using "exigent" or "proclamation" in a historical corpus will surface both this obsolete English procedure and the thoroughly modern Fourth Amendment doctrine of exigent circumstances. These are false cognates for research purposes. A researcher investigating warrant exceptions in constitutional law has no use for this term; a researcher tracing outlawry, fugitive procedure, or the mechanics of English civil and criminal process before the nineteenth century will find it essential.
The notice function embedded in the proclamation of exigents is worth isolating analytically. The requirement of three public proclamations in locations most likely to reach the defendant reflects a due process instinct — a structural concern that no one should be outlawed without meaningful opportunity to appear — operating long before that concern was constitutionalized. Researchers working on the historical roots of procedural due process, notice doctrine, or in absentia proceedings may find this mechanism a useful data point.
Blackstone's Commentaries (Book III, page 284) is the primary source for this term in the English tradition and the anchor for its appearance in Black's Law Dictionary. Rapalje & Lawrence offer no independent treatment, directing readers instead to the entry for EXIGENT — a signal that by the late nineteenth century, American legal lexicographers considered the proclamation of exigents a subordinate aspect of the exigent process rather than a freestanding doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the operative definition, drawing directly from Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Comm. 284). The definition is precise and procedurally specific: three proclamations, most notorious locations, one-month window before outlawry. Black's treats this as a discrete writ with its own command structure, not merely a feature of the exigent.
Rapalje & Lawrence add nothing substantive, cross-referencing only to EXIGENT. This editorial choice is itself informative: by the time of Rapalje & Lawrence's publication, American practice had moved far enough from English outlawry procedure that the proclamation of exigents required no independent treatment. The term had become a historical artifact even for practicing lawyers of that era.
Neither source addresses the term's Scottish or Irish procedural analogues, nor its appearance (or absence) in early American colonial practice. Researchers looking for jurisdictional transplantation of this procedure into early American law will need to look beyond these dictionaries to primary sources and historical treatises on colonial common law reception.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Warrantless Searches — Exigent Circumstances (criminal_152) [For researchers who have arrived at this term via a search for "exigent" but are investigating the modern constitutional doctrine — this is the correct destination for that research thread.]
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia: Exceptions to the Warrant Requirement — Search Incident to Arrest, Exigent Circumstances, Automobile (constitutional_117) [Same navigational note applies.]