Definition
A writ directed to the justices of the Court of Common Pleas commanding them to send up the record of a recognizance that the recognizor alleges was entered into by force and duress. If examination of the record confirmed that the recognizance had indeed been coerced, the writ authorized the court to annul it. The phrase translates from Latin as "recognizances to be annulled on account of force and duress made."
In practical terms, the writ served as the procedural mechanism by which a party bound by a recognizance could challenge and void that obligation on the ground that consent had been compelled rather than freely given. It combined a record-transfer function — bringing the matter before the appropriate court — with the substantive relief of annulment upon proof of coercion.
Common Confusion
This writ should not be conflated with the broader class of writs coram nobis or writs of error, which challenged judgments on grounds of factual or legal error in the original proceeding. Recognitions Adnullanda Per Vim Et Duritiem Facta was a specialized instrument directed specifically at the involuntariness of a recognizance — not at procedural defect or mistake of law. Researchers should also take care to distinguish it from actions sounding in duress as a general contract defense; this writ operated within the formal recognizance framework of the common law courts and had no application to ordinary contractual obligations.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear only in the most archaic layers of English common law practice — primarily in the register of original writs (Registrum Originale) and in treatises on the forms of action predating the Judicature Acts of the 1870s. Researchers encountering it in historical sources should understand that it belongs to a system of highly formalized writ pleading that no longer exists in modern practice.
Several traps await the historical researcher. First, the Latin heading may appear in variant spellings or abbreviated form in manuscript sources and early printed registers — the writ's operative words were drawn from standard formulary language, but copyists were inconsistent. Second, because this writ required transmission of the original recognizance record from the Common Bench, any research into how it was actually used must trace both the originating writ and the underlying recognizance record, which may be filed separately in the plea rolls. Third, the annulment standard — that duress "appear" from the record — raised evidentiary questions that early sources do not fully resolve, and researchers should not assume modern duress doctrine maps cleanly onto what was required to satisfy the writ.
The corpus connection to recognizances generally is important: a recognizance was an acknowledgment of a debt or obligation made before a court or magistrate, enforceable by the Crown without further action. The stakes of coerced recognizances were therefore high — they functioned as self-executing obligations — which explains why a dedicated writ for annulling them existed at all.
American legal sources will not address this writ directly. It is a creature of English practice and has no functional equivalent in American procedure, where duress as a defense to a recognizance would be raised through ordinary motion practice or by pleading in a show-cause proceeding.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) is the sole dictionary source available for this entry, and its treatment is brief: it identifies the writ as directed to the justices of the Common Bench, describes its function as compelling transmission of a recognizance record, and states that annulment follows if the duress appears on the record. Black's cites the Registrum Originale at page 183 as authority, which is the proper primary source for this class of writ — the Reg. Orig. was the official register of approved writ forms used by the Chancery clerks who issued original writs.
Black's entry, characteristically for supplemental Latin writ entries, provides the skeleton of the writ's function without addressing its historical use in practice, the evidentiary standard applied, or its relationship to the broader law of duress and recognizances. Researchers seeking substantive analysis must go beyond the dictionary to Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium and the commentary tradition on the register of original writs.
No other standard historical law dictionaries — not Bouvier, not Tomlin, not Jacob — appear to have given this writ a dedicated entry, reflecting its highly specialized and infrequently litigated character even within the medieval and early modern common law system.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is exclusively English in origin and application. It presupposed the institutional structure of the Court of Common Pleas and the Chancery's role in issuing original writs — institutions that were either not transplanted to American colonies or were quickly replaced by domestic procedural systems. No American jurisdiction adopted or adapted this specific writ form.