Definition
A historical Latin writ of English origin by which a person was summoned to answer and justify a complaint of trespass made directly to the king, heard and determined before the king and his council. The full Latin phrase translates roughly as "a complaint to be discussed and terminated before the king in council." The writ functioned as a mechanism for bringing grievances of trespass to the highest level of royal adjudication — the king's council sitting in its judicial capacity — bypassing or supplementing the ordinary common law courts.
Why It Matters in Research
This writ is a relic of the earliest period of English conciliar justice and sits at the intersection of prerogative power, the development of equity, and the institutional prehistory of the Court of Star Chamber and the Privy Council. Researchers encountering this term in medieval or early modern English legal records should understand several points.
First, the writ belongs to a class of royal writs that predates the full differentiation of English courts. In this period, the king's council exercised a broad and undifferentiated judicial function, and writs of this kind represent the council acting as a court of first and superior resort for certain grievances — particularly those framed as trespasses against the king's peace or as matters too great or sensitive for the ordinary county courts.
Second, the citation to Register of Original Writs (Reg. Orig. 124) places this writ squarely in the formulary tradition. The Registrum Omnium Brevium, or Register of Writs, was the authoritative collection of approved writ forms in English practice. Finding a writ form in the Register is significant: it indicates the writ had achieved at least some degree of formal recognition, not merely ad hoc royal command. Researchers working with the Register should be aware that different manuscript versions and printed editions vary in their pagination and organization, and the reference "124" in Black's Second Edition may not correspond directly to all editions in circulation.
Third, because the writ invokes the king's council rather than a named common law court, it is part of the doctrinal lineage that eventually produced the equitable and prerogative jurisdiction of Chancery and Star Chamber. Researchers tracing the origins of equity or prerogative jurisdiction will find this writ — and others like it — useful as evidence of how royal justice operated before those courts crystallized into distinct institutions.
Fourth, this entry appears only in the Supplemental section of Black's Second Edition, signaling that it was treated even by early twentieth-century American legal lexicographers as an arcane term requiring supplementary explanation. Researchers should not expect to find this writ discussed in American legal sources beyond historical or comparative contexts. Its relevance is almost entirely confined to English legal history prior to the Tudor consolidation of royal courts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Second Edition (Supplemental) provides the only dictionary entry identified for this writ and offers a compact but accurate summary: a writ calling a person to justify a complaint of trespass before the king and his council, citing Reg. Orig. 124. The entry is characteristic of Black's treatment of archaic Latin writs — functional and brief, oriented toward identification rather than doctrinal analysis.
The historical dictionaries do not elaborate on the procedural mechanics of this writ, its relationship to other trespass writs, or the circumstances under which it would be preferred over ordinary common law process. Researchers should not expect the dictionary record alone to explain how frequently this writ was used in practice, what range of trespasses it covered, or how it interacted with the emerging jurisdiction of the common law courts. For those questions, the primary sources — plea rolls, council records, and the Register itself — are necessary.
The term's Latin construction is itself instructive to a trained reader: querela (complaint or plaint), coram rege (before the king), a concilio (by the council), discutienda et terminanda (to be discussed and determined). This formula mirrors the language of other conciliar and prerogative instruments and helps situate the writ within the broader vocabulary of medieval royal justice.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is exclusively a product of English legal history and has no direct counterpart in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. It is relevant only to research concerning medieval and early modern English law, the development of prerogative courts, or the institutional origins of equity jurisdiction.