Definition
A now-obsolete writ of English origin that protected a subsequent purchaser of land from being burdened in an assize action for damages arising from the original disseisor's wrongful act. Specifically, the writ lay in favor of a person to whom a disseisor had alienated the disseised land, shielding that transferee from being molested or impleaded in an assize for damages, provided the original disseisor himself had sufficient assets to satisfy any judgment. The writ's operation was equitable in principle: where the wrongdoer remained capable of answering for the harm, the innocent transferee would not be made to bear that liability in his place.
The name is Latin and translates roughly as "that tenants in assize not be burdened" — a phrase that describes the writ's protective purpose with some precision.
Common Confusion
The writ should not be confused with the assize of novel disseisin itself, which was the primary possessory action targeting unlawful dispossession of freehold land. Tenentibus in assisa non onerandis was a collateral or ancillary writ, not a freestanding possessory remedy. It presupposed that a disseisin had occurred and that land had already passed to a third-party transferee; its function was to redirect liability to the original wrongdoer rather than contest the fact of disseisin. Researchers who encounter references to this writ in plea rolls or registers should not treat it as a variant form of the assize itself.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in early English common law sources — primarily in registers of original writs, abridgments, and formularies from the medieval and early modern period. Researchers working in pre-modern English legal history, particularly in the records of the common law courts before the abolition of the forms of action, may encounter it in manuscript registers or printed abridgments.
Several navigational points are worth noting:
The writ belongs to a cluster of ancillary writs that grew up around the possessory assizes — actions such as novel disseisin, mort d'ancestor, and darrein presentment — which were progressively superseded and eventually abolished by the Real Property Limitation Act 1833 and the Common Law Procedure Act 1852 in England. Once the possessory assizes ceased to function as living procedure, writs like this one became purely historical artifacts. There is no modern counterpart in any common law jurisdiction.
The Latin spelling in historical sources is not always consistent. Black's renders it with a hyphen ("non on-erandis"), suggesting typographical rather than substantive variation; the operative word is onerandis, from onerare, to burden or load. Researchers searching digitized primary sources should try variant spellings.
The writ's underlying logic — that a blameless transferee should not answer for a predecessor's tort where the original wrongdoer remains solvent — has loose analogues in modern successor liability doctrine, but the structural and procedural contexts are entirely different. Drawing substantive doctrinal connections would require great caution.
No American common law development of this writ is known. It did not travel meaningfully into colonial American practice, likely because the possessory assize system itself never fully transplanted, and American courts developed distinct ejectment-based land recovery procedures early in the colonial period.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides the only entry among the shelf sources. The definition is spare but accurate: the writ lay for one to whom a disseisor had alienated land, protecting that person from being molested in assize for damages, conditioned on the disseisor having sufficient means to satisfy them. The Reg. orig. 214 citation refers to the Registrum Omnium Brevium, the standard printed register of original writs, which was a foundational formulary of English common law procedure. That citation is the appropriate primary source anchor for this writ.
No other shelf sources address this term. Its absence from the main body of Black's and from other standard dictionaries reflects how narrow its procedural niche was even in historical practice. Researchers should not expect to find doctrinal elaboration in secondary legal literature; the register itself and the early abridgments (Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium and Rolle's Abridgment) are the closest authorities.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ was purely an English common law instrument and has no recognized form or equivalent in Scots law, civil law systems, or any American jurisdiction. It is of interest today only in the context of English legal history and the history of the forms of action.