Definition
A Latin maxim of ecclesiastical and common law, translating roughly as "that a parson [or spiritual person] shall not be distrained" — more fully rendered in its operative form as a principle protecting clergy and spiritual persons from certain forms of civil distraint, particularly in connection with parish assessments such as the fifteenth (a form of lay subsidy or tax). The maxim underpins the writ known in historical practice as the *Quod Persona nec Prebendarius*, which lay to protect spiritual persons whose ecclesiastical possessions were seized in connection with fiscal obligations shared with lay parishioners. The core legal proposition is that a person holding spiritual office or a prebend could not be compelled by distraint of their spiritual property to contribute to lay fiscal obligations — such as the fifteenth — in the same manner as lay parishioners.
The maxim is closely associated with the writ referenced in Fitzherbert's *Natura Brevium* at folio 175, which provided a remedy for clergy distrained contrary to this principle. The writ and the underlying rule are classified as obsolete in the historical sources.
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Common Confusion
This maxim is sometimes conflated with the broader principle of clerical immunity from civil taxation or the separate doctrine of *benefit of clergy*. These are distinct. *Benefit of clergy* concerned criminal jurisdiction and the right of ordained persons to be tried in ecclesiastical rather than royal courts. The *Quod Persona nec Preben* principle addressed a narrower fiscal question: whether spiritual property held by clergy could be distrained for a specific lay parish assessment — the fifteenth — alongside lay property. The two doctrines operated in different procedural contexts and had different histories of abrogation.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term presents several navigational challenges for Law Mind corpus researchers:
**Truncation in sources.** Both Black's (2nd Ed.) and Rapalje & Lawrence present this maxim in fragmentary form within their respective entries — the full text of the maxim is interrupted by the formatting of adjacent entries. Researchers encountering the term in these sources should treat it as a partial transcription and consult Fitzherbert's *Natura Brevium* (the primary historical authority cited at f. 175) for the complete writ formulation and operative context.
**Obsolescence.** Both sources explicitly flag the associated writ as obsolete. The principle therefore has no live procedural application in modern common law jurisdictions. Research utility is confined to: (1) historical ecclesiastical law questions, (2) the history of clerical fiscal exemptions in England, (3) understanding the relationship between medieval parish taxation structures and ecclesiastical property law, and (4) interpreting pre-modern pleading records involving spiritual persons distrained for parish assessments.
**The fifteenth.** The fiscal mechanism at the center of this doctrine — the fifteenth — was a periodic levy assessed on movable property, historically shared between lay and spiritual holders within a parish. Understanding what the fifteenth was, and why clergy might contest being assessed alongside laypeople, is essential context for interpreting any document invoking this maxim. Researchers unfamiliar with medieval English fiscal history should approach secondary literature on lay subsidies before drawing conclusions from primary sources using this term.
**Corpus placement.** In both Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence, this entry appears in close proximity to entries on *Quod populus postremum jussit* and related maxims, and the text runs together in a way that can obscure where one entry ends and another begins. Careful attention to entry boundaries is required when using digitized or transcribed versions of these dictionaries.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) and Rapalje & Lawrence are in close agreement — their entries are nearly identical in substance, both pointing to Fitzherbert's *Natura Brevium* folio 175 as the authoritative source and both classifying the writ as obsolete. Neither dictionary provides extended analysis; the entry in both sources functions as a brief identifier and cross-reference rather than a developed explanation.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide: any discussion of the writ's procedural mechanics, the circumstances under which clergy successfully invoked it, or the historical moment at which the principle fell into disuse. For those questions, Fitzherbert remains the primary source, supplemented by Blackstone's treatment of ecclesiastical property and clerical exemptions in the *Commentaries*. The dictionaries are sufficient for identification purposes but inadequate for substantive research into the doctrine's operation.
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Jurisdictional Note
This doctrine is specific to English ecclesiastical and common law history. It has no recognized counterpart in American law, and the underlying fiscal mechanism — the fifteenth as a parish levy — was never transplanted to colonial or post-independence American legal systems. Research relevance is confined to English legal history and, derivatively, to comparative ecclesiastical law.
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