Definition
A writ directing the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer to respite — that is, to postpone or hold in suspension — the rendering of a sheriff's account. In practice, the writ operated as a formal delay mechanism within the Exchequer's accounting process, relieving a sheriff of the immediate obligation to settle his financial account with the Crown until a later time. The Latin translates roughly as "for having respite of the account of the sheriff."
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow, highly specialized writ of English Exchequer practice with no modern counterpart in common legal systems. Researchers encountering the term will almost certainly do so in medieval or early modern English administrative records, plea rolls, or register entries — not in case law or treatise literature of the kind that shaped American or post-reform English law.
The term belongs to the broader family of Exchequer writs governing the sheriff's accountability to the Crown for revenue collected within his county. The sheriff was the Crown's principal local financial officer in medieval England, and his annual account at the Exchequer — rendered at the Pipe Office and recorded on the Pipe Rolls — was a central feature of royal fiscal administration. Writs like this one were procedural instruments within that system, not substantive legal remedies in the modern sense.
Researchers working in English legal history should note that the Exchequer's accounting machinery was substantially reorganized and eventually abolished in the nineteenth century. References to this writ in post-reform sources are antiquarian only. In primary sources, spellings vary considerably — "respectu," "respectum," "computi," and "vicecomitis" each admit variant forms in medieval Latin manuscripts, and transcription errors are common.
The writ's practical utility was tied to the realities of medieval sheriffdom: a sheriff might legitimately seek delay if accounts were disputed, if collection was incomplete due to ongoing litigation, or if the audit itself required further time to prepare. The writ thus served a function analogous to a continuance or deferral in modern procedural terms, though the institutional context — the Exchequer as a hybrid financial-judicial body — has no direct modern equivalent.
Researchers should be cautious about inferring the writ's precise scope from the Black's entry alone. The citation to "Reg. orig. 139" refers to the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Register of Original Writs), a foundational source for the forms of English writs, but consulting that source directly is essential before drawing conclusions about the writ's exact operation or conditions of issuance.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) Supplemental provides the only dictionary entry in the Law Mind corpus for this term. The definition is brief: a writ for respiting a sheriff's account, addressed to the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer, with a citation to the Registrum Omnium Brevium at folio 139. No further elaboration is given as to the conditions under which the writ issued, its procedural effects, or its relationship to other Exchequer writs.
The entry's brevity is itself informative. By the time Black's second edition was compiled, this writ had been obsolete for generations. It appears in the dictionary as a matter of historical completeness rather than practical relevance. No other standard historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus — including Bouvier or Jacob — appear to carry independent entries for this specific writ, making Black's the primary reference point within the corpus.
Researchers seeking fuller treatment should look to specialized works on Exchequer procedure, the Pipe Rolls published by the Pipe Roll Society, and scholarship on medieval English administrative law, which will provide context the dictionary literature does not.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is exclusively a product of English Exchequer practice. It has no counterpart in American law, Scots law, or any civil law system. Its relevance is confined to English legal history prior to the nineteenth-century abolition and reorganization of the Exchequer courts.