Definition
A Law French phrase meaning "let it be delivered to the commons." In English parliamentary practice, this was the form of endorsement written on a bill when it was transmitted from the House of Lords to the House of Commons. The phrase functioned as a procedural notation — a brief, formulaic inscription confirming the bill's passage to the lower chamber for its consideration.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a historical artifact of English parliamentary procedure and will appear primarily in older legal sources, parliamentary records, and treatises dealing with the mechanics of English legislation before and during the early modern period. Researchers working in colonial American legal history, English constitutional history, or the history of legislative drafting may encounter the phrase in primary sources without explanation.
The term belongs to a larger family of Law French parliamentary endorsements — formulaic phrases that governed the movement and fate of bills through Parliament. Understanding this phrase in context requires familiarity with the companion phrase SOIT BAILE AUX SEIGNEURS (let it be delivered to the lords), which served the corresponding function when a bill moved in the opposite direction. Researchers who encounter one phrase in a source will likely need the other.
Because the phrase is purely procedural and ceremonial in function, it carries no substantive legal content on its own. Its significance lies entirely in context: identifying which stage a bill had reached in the parliamentary process. In archival or manuscript sources, it appears as a marginal or dorsal notation on the physical document of the bill itself.
The Dyer citation appearing in both Black's and Burrill's (Dyer, 93a) refers to Sir James Dyer's Reports, a foundational collection of English case law and legal notes from the sixteenth century. That citation points researchers toward one of the earliest printed sources for this parliamentary usage, and it signals that the phrase was already treated as established form by Dyer's time.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's entries are in complete agreement — both reproduce the identical definition and the identical citation to Dyer. Neither source adds context beyond the translation and the citation, which is characteristic of how both dictionaries treat archaic Law French terms of parliamentary procedure: they translate and cite, but do not elaborate.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide is any discussion of when this endorsement practice originated, how it fit into the broader procedural framework of Parliament, or whether the precise French formula had variants across different periods. Researchers seeking that context will need to consult parliamentary history sources rather than legal dictionaries.
The agreement between Black's and Burrill's here reflects shared sourcing rather than independent corroboration — both are almost certainly drawing from the same thin stream of authority on a highly specialized procedural term.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase is specific to the Parliament of England and, later, Great Britain. It has no application in American law and no equivalent function in any American legislative body. Its relevance to American legal research is historical only.