Definition
Latin. Literally, "is delivered to bail." A formal phrase of art that appeared in the old Latin bail-piece — the written instrument by which a defendant in an English common law action was formally committed to the custody of sureties. The words "traditur in ballium" functioned as the operative declaration of the bail transaction, signifying that the prisoner or defendant had been released from direct court or jailer's custody and delivered into the legal custody of the named bail sureties.
The bail-piece itself was the physical record of the sureties' undertaking. "Traditur in ballium" were the emphatic words — the performative core of the document — that effected the legal transfer of custody from the court to the sureties. Once written and acknowledged, those words transformed the sureties into the legal keepers of the defendant, responsible for his appearance at the required time and place.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of exclusively historical and procedural significance. Researchers will encounter it only in pre-modern English common law records, pleading forms, and practice manuals dating primarily from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Latin remained the language of formal legal instruments in English courts.
The phrase appears nowhere in modern practice. Bail is now memorialized in English-language forms, bonds, and recognizances, and the concept of the bail-piece as a distinct Latin instrument has been abolished. A researcher who finds "traditur in ballium" in a historical record is looking at the operative language of a bail-piece, not a plea, not a judgment, and not a writ.
The citation to 1 Salk. 105 (Salkeld's Reports) grounds the phrase in a real period source — William Salkeld's reports of King's Bench decisions from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries — and confirms this is authentic courtroom vocabulary of that era, not a theoretical construct. Note that Burrill cites the same report at 1 Salk. 195, a discrepancy in page reference that researchers cross-checking the original Salkeld Reports should flag when tracing the phrase to its source.
For corpus researchers working in Law Mind: this phrase is a reliable marker that a document originates in, or is reproducing, pre-modern English common law practice. Its presence in a document helps date the instrument or confirms that a later text is copying or describing an earlier form. It connects directly to the broader procedural history of bail, mainprize, and surety practice — areas where terminology shifted substantially between the medieval period and the nineteenth century.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries (Black's first and second editions, Burrill) agree precisely on meaning and function: the phrase is the operative declaration of the old Latin bail-piece, signifying formal delivery to bail. The definitions are nearly verbatim across all three, which is characteristic of later dictionaries drawing on Burrill or a shared common source.
The minor discrepancy between Black's (1 Salk. 105) and Burrill (1 Salk. 195) is a transcription variance, not a substantive disagreement. Neither dictionary provides interpretive elaboration beyond the core definition, and none attempts to trace the phrase through the fuller history of bail procedure. Researchers wanting that context must look outside the dictionary shelf — to older practice manuals such as Impey's Practice of the Office of Sheriff or the institutional writers on common law pleading.
What the historical dictionaries do not do: they do not explain the mechanics of the bail-piece as a document, the consequences of a surety's failure after traditur in ballium was executed, or how this practice related to recognizances. Those gaps must be filled from treatise and primary source research.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Bail (Historical Common Law Practice); Bail-Piece; Suretyship (Common Law)
---