Definition
Ralities (also rendered "ralites" or "ralites") were officers or custodians to whom the English Crown committed the custody of a vacant see or abbey. When a bishopric or abbacy fell vacant — through death, resignation, or removal of its incumbent — the Crown, exercising its temporal jurisdiction over ecclesiastical institutions, would appoint a person to manage and preserve the temporalities of that benefice until a new incumbent was installed. The rality held this custody on behalf of the Crown and was accountable for the revenues and property of the institution during the vacancy.
Common Language
No meaningful common usage exists for this term. It is pure historical legal and ecclesiastical jargon with no modern ordinary-language counterpart.
Common Confusion
Ralities should not be confused with the broader office of custos or the general concept of sequestration of ecclesiastical revenues. The rality was specifically a Crown-appointed custodian of a vacant see or abbey — not merely an administrator of revenues, and not an agent of the church hierarchy. Researchers may also encounter the term "custos spiritualitatis," which denotes the ecclesiastical custodian of a diocese sede vacante, a distinct and parallel office operating under church authority rather than royal appointment. The rality belongs to the Crown's temporal jurisdiction; the custos spiritualitatis belongs to the church's spiritual jurisdiction. Both offices could operate simultaneously over the same vacancy.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is effectively extinct in modern legal usage and will appear almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English ecclesiastical and common law sources. Researchers working in records of the Exchequer, the Patent Rolls, or the Close Rolls for the medieval and early Tudor periods may encounter appointments or accountings tied to this office without the term being used explicitly. The underlying concept — royal custody of ecclesiastical temporalities during vacancy — was a major point of friction between the Crown and the Church throughout the medieval period and features prominently in disputes surrounding investiture, the Constitutions of Clarendon, and later statutory enactments governing ecclesiastical vacancies.
Researchers should be aware that Bouvier's entry is sparse and somewhat isolated. The term does not appear in standard modern legal dictionaries, and its historical usage is more fully illuminated through ecclesiastical history sources and medieval administrative records than through the common law dictionary tradition. If you encounter the term in a primary source, the surrounding context — particularly whether the document is a royal writ, an exchequer account, or an ecclesiastical record — will be critical to understanding the precise function being described.
The concept survived in attenuated form into the post-Reformation period, when Crown custody of vacant sees continued under statutory authority, but the specific vocabulary shifted and the office of rality as a named position largely disappeared from formal usage.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary provides the only dictionary-tradition entry for this term in the Law Mind corpus: "The person to whose custody a vacant see or abbey was committed by the crown." This is a single-sentence entry with no elaboration, cross-reference, or contextual development. Bouvier does not address the procedural mechanism of appointment, the duration of the custody, the rality's powers over revenues or temporalities, or the historical relationship of the office to broader Crown-Church jurisdictional contests. The entry is useful as a definitional anchor but should be treated as a starting point rather than a sufficient account of the office. Historical sources in ecclesiastical law and administrative history will be necessary for any substantive research touching on this role.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to the historical law of England and pertains to the medieval and early modern Crown's jurisdiction over the Church of England and its predecessor institutions. It has no recognized counterpart in American, Scottish, or continental legal systems.