Definition
A Latin term of medieval Scots law meaning "quit" or "free" — typically appearing in formal instruments to declare that a person is discharged from an obligation, liability, or claim. Most commonly encountered in the compound phrase *quittos et immunes* ("quit and clear"), which served as a standard formula of release or acquittance in early Scottish legal documents.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a paleographic and formulaic term, not a substantive legal concept with a continuing modern life. Researchers encounter *quittus* almost exclusively in transcriptions or editions of early Scottish criminal and civil records — particularly proceedings and instruments predating the consolidation of Scots law. Its significance is recognitional: a researcher reading through Pitcairn's *Criminal Trials* or similar documentary sources needs to identify *quittos et immunes* as a standard release formula rather than a term carrying independent doctrinal weight.
The term does not appear in English common law sources with any regularity, and modern Scots law has no use for it. It belongs to the stratum of ecclesiastical and continental Latin that permeated medieval Scottish legal instruments before vernacular Scots and later English displaced Latin in formal records. Researchers working in early modern Scottish legal history should treat it as a member of a family of acquittance formulae alongside *quietus est* and *quittus clamavit*, and should check whether their source is using the term descriptively or transcribing a formula verbatim.
Cross-corpus traps are minimal but worth noting: the superficial similarity to *quietus* and *quietus est* (the standard English Exchequer discharge formula) can mislead. The terms are cognate and functionally analogous, but they appear in distinct documentary traditions. Conflating them in a research note or index can produce false connections between English and Scottish administrative records.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the only shelf source in the Law Mind corpus to treat *quittus* directly. Burrill's entry is brief — correctly situating the term in "old Scotch law," glossing it as "quit; free," and noting the compound *quittos et immunes* with a single reference to Pitcairn's *Criminal Trials*. The entry is accurate but minimal, offering identification rather than analysis.
What Burrill does not provide — and what no standard historical legal dictionary does — is a comparative account placing *quittus* within the broader Latin formulary tradition of medieval Scotland. The term's significance is contextual and documentary rather than doctrinal, which explains why it receives little treatment in English-centered law dictionaries. Jacob's, Tomlin's, and Bouvier's do not appear to address it; this is consistent with the term's absence from English common law sources.
Researchers should not expect to find *quittus* in dictionaries of English legal Latinisms such as Cowel's *Interpreter* — its home is specifically in Scottish records and the editions of those records produced by nineteenth-century legal antiquarians.
Jurisdictional Note
*Quittus* is a term of Scottish legal history specifically. It has no established usage in English, Irish, or American legal sources and should not be imported into those contexts by analogy.