Definition
A writ, now obsolete, that lay against a person impleaded in a county court for surcharging a common — that is, for putting more cattle onto common land than his right entitled him to pasture there. The writ's specific function was procedural: it applied when the defendant had already been impleaded for the same offense in the same county court, and the cause had since been removed into one of the superior courts. In that posture, the writ operated to address the redundancy or continuation of proceedings arising from the original local complaint.
The term is Latin, translating roughly as "upon overloading of pasture," and it belongs to the technical vocabulary of medieval English common-law procedure governing rights of common.
Core Elements
Superoneratione pasture had three functional requirements:
1. Surcharge of a common. The underlying wrong was surcharging — placing more animals on common pasture than the defendant's right of common permitted. The right to pasture a defined number of animals was called a right of common appendant or appurtenant, and any excess constituted a legal injury to the other commoners.
2. Prior impleadment in the county court. The writ presupposed that the defendant had already been brought before the county court for the same surcharge. It was not a first-instance remedy but a procedural instrument triggered by prior local litigation.
3. Removal to a superior court. The county court proceeding had to have been removed into one of the superior courts before the writ became available. The writ thus operated at the intersection of local and royal court jurisdiction, managing the procedural consequences of that jurisdictional transfer.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a navigational marker more than a living legal concept. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in three contexts: (1) treatises and form books from medieval and early modern English practice, where writs were catalogued by name; (2) historical treatments of common-law pleading and the writ system generally; and (3) scholarship on rights of common and agrarian law in England before enclosure transformed the legal landscape.
The writ's obsolescence is not a footnote — it is the central fact. Superoneratione pasture belongs to the pre-modern writ system, in which a specific writ was required for virtually every cause of action. The abolition of the forms of action in England (and their gradual displacement in American jurisdictions) rendered the entire category of such specialized writs defunct. A researcher who encounters this term in a historical source should treat it as a signal that the surrounding text is engaging with early common-law procedure, likely pre-nineteenth century, and probably drawing on English practice that had no direct American counterpart.
For researchers tracing surcharge disputes in historical records, the underlying concept — that a commoner's right to pasture is limited in number and kind, and that excess animals constitute an actionable wrong — survived the writ system even if the writ itself did not. Modern equivalents, where they exist, are found in nuisance, trespass, or injunctive relief under property law, not in any surviving writ form.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje and Lawrence's entry is brief but precise, capturing the essential elements: the writ lay against a defendant who was being impleaded in county court for surcharging a common, specifically when a prior impleadment for the same matter had already been removed to a superior court. Their notation of "Obsolete" is the entry's most practically significant word for the modern researcher.
No other source in the current corpus provides an entry for this term. That absence is itself informative: the writ was sufficiently narrow and archaic that even comprehensive nineteenth-century American law dictionaries often omitted it or folded it into broader treatments of common rights or the writ system. Researchers needing fuller treatment should consult Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium and later writ-form literature from the English common-law tradition, where the procedural mechanics of such writs are set out in greater detail.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ is purely English in origin and has no recognized counterpart in American law. American jurisdictions did not inherit the county court structure or the writ-form system in the form that generated instruments like superoneratione pasture. Researchers working in American legal history will not encounter this writ in domestic records.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See COMMON (RIGHT OF) for the substantive property right underlying the surcharge action, and WRIT SYSTEM for the procedural framework within which this instrument operated.