Definition
Registrum Brevium (Latin: "register of writs") is the name given to the historical English collection of approved writ forms maintained by the royal chancery. The Register of Writs was the official catalogue of standardized writs — the formal written commands issued in the king's name — that a plaintiff could obtain to initiate common law litigation. Each entry in the register specified the proper form for a particular type of legal action, and only writs conforming to an established form would be accepted by the common law courts. The Registrum Brevium thus functioned as both a procedural manual and a boundary marker: if a recognized writ existed for your grievance, you had a remedy at common law; if none existed, you generally did not.
The register developed over centuries, beginning in the thirteenth century as an informal chancery working document and eventually circulating in printed form. The most important printed editions appeared in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and became standard references for common lawyers. The register's contents were not static — new writs were added by statute or chancery practice, and old forms were refined — but the register as a whole represented the accumulated orthodox forms of common law pleading.
Common Confusion
Registrum Brevium is frequently encountered alongside — and sometimes confused with — two related works. Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium (first printed 1534) is a treatise organized around and commenting upon the writs in the register, not the register itself. The two circulated together and are often cited in tandem, but the Natura Brevium is a practitioner's guide; the Registrum Brevium is the underlying official collection. Additionally, the Old Natura Brevium, an earlier and distinct work predating Fitzherbert's, further complicates the landscape. Researchers encountering citations to "the register" or "natura brevium" in early modern sources should not assume interchangeability.
Why It Matters in Research
The Registrum Brevium is foundational context for any research touching on the historical English common law writ system, the forms of action, and the relationship between chancery and the common law courts. Several research traps are worth noting.
First, the register defined the ceiling of common law jurisdiction. Understanding which writs appeared in the register — and which did not — explains why equity jurisdiction expanded as it did. Plaintiffs whose wrongs fell outside any recognized writ form were driven to the Court of Chancery. Researchers tracing the origins of equitable doctrines will repeatedly encounter this dynamic.
Second, the printed editions of the Registrum Brevium do not all agree. The register circulated in manuscript long before print, and variant forms exist. When historical sources cite "the register," they may be referencing different manuscript traditions or different printed editions. The major printed editions (notably those of 1531, 1553, and the later seventeenth-century editions) differ in organization and some writ forms. A researcher relying on a secondary source's description of a writ's "registered form" should verify which edition is meant.
Third, the register is closely tied to Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, which was not the register itself but an extended commentary on the writs contained in it. These two works are frequently cited together in early modern legal literature and are sometimes conflated by later writers. They are distinct documents serving distinct functions.
Fourth, for corpus researchers working with pre-nineteenth-century English legal materials, the Registrum Brevium appears as both a practical reference tool and a rhetorical touchstone. Lawyers cited "the register" to establish that a form of action was orthodox or, conversely, to challenge novel pleading.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries agree on the essential point with notable economy: all three define Registrum Brevium simply as "the register of writs" and direct the reader to that cross-reference entry. This uniform brevity reflects that the term was considered self-explanatory to the nineteenth-century lawyer trained in common law forms of action.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry contains a transcription artifact — the phrase "the registian era which had elapsed at the beginter of writs" appears to be a corrupted passage where typesetting errors have obscured the original text. This is not a substantive definition but a printing defect. Researchers should not treat this garbled phrase as reflecting any independent definition.
None of the three sources offer historical context, describe the development of the register over time, or distinguish among printed editions. Researchers relying solely on these dictionary entries will miss the substantive complexity of the document's history and the interpretive significance of which edition of the register is in play for a given legal question.
Jurisdictional Note
The Registrum Brevium is an English common law source with no direct equivalent in other jurisdictions. Its relevance in American legal research is primarily historical: American courts in the colonial and early republic period applied common law forms of action, and the writ system — including the framework of recognized writs — informed early American civil procedure until statutory reforms abolished the forms of action in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.