Definition
A Latin phrase from old English practice meaning "is delivered to bail." The words functioned as the operative formula inscribed on a bail-piece — the written instrument by which a prisoner was formally committed to the custody of sureties who stood surety for the prisoner's appearance. The phrase was not a term of substantive law but a term of form: its presence on the bail-piece effected the legal act of release into bail custody.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in pre-modern English procedural records, writs, and bail-pieces. Researchers encountering it in historical court documents, plea rolls, or transcripts of practice should understand that it signals the formal moment of transfer from crown or jailer custody to the custody of sureties. It is a signal phrase, not a standalone legal concept — its significance lies in what surrounds it on the document, namely the identities of the sureties, the conditions of the recognizance, and the court from which bail issued. The single citation in Black's — Salkeld's Reports — points to King's Bench practice in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Researchers working in that corpus should expect the phrase in conjunction with habeas corpus proceedings and bail applications before King's Bench. Because the term belongs to Latin-formula practice that was largely abandoned as English courts moved toward vernacular pleading and standardized printed forms, it will not appear in American sources with any regularity, and its absence from most American legal dictionaries reflects that discontinuity. Do not expect modern equivalents to carry this phrase forward: contemporary bail instruments use vernacular language and the formal bail-piece as a distinct document type has no direct American analog.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) is the sole source in the Law Mind corpus to define this term. Black's characterizes it concisely as emphatic words of the old Latin bail-piece, citing Salkeld's Reports at 1 Salk. 105. The entry is spare by design: by the time Black's was compiled, the phrase had receded entirely into historical practice and warranted identification rather than elaboration. No substantive legal doctrine turns on the phrase itself; its interest is procedural and documentary. Black's does not define the bail-piece as a separate entry in this edition, which is a gap researchers should note — understanding traditurin ballium requires understanding the bail-piece instrument as its context. Earlier English law dictionaries and practice manuals, such as those of Giles Jacob and Thomas Blount, address bail-piece practice in greater depth and would be the appropriate next stop for researchers needing fuller procedural context.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to historical English common law practice and has no recognized application in American or other common law jurisdictions. Its appearance in American sources, if any, will be in historical or comparative contexts only.