Definition
A Latin term from old common law pleading and practice meaning "brought" or "he brought." Derived from the Latin verb *ferre* (to bring), *tulit* appears in the third person singular past tense and was used in formal record entries and Year Book reports to note that a party had initiated or presented a legal writ or action. The phrase *tulit breve* — he brought a writ — was the standard formula for recording the commencement of a proceeding by writ.
Why It Matters in Research
*Tulit* is a term of record, not a substantive legal concept. Researchers will encounter it only in transcriptions, translations, or digests of medieval English court records, Year Books, and early common law reports — sources that frequently preserve Latin formulaic language in their original or near-original form. Its significance is entirely procedural and contextual: the word signals that a party formally initiated a legal proceeding by presenting a writ to the court.
The chief research trap is misreading *tulit* as a term of art with independent doctrinal weight. It carries none. It is a scribal and record-keeping convention, analogous to later English phrases like "filed" or "sued out." When encountered in a Year Book extract or early abridgment, it marks the act of commencing suit — nothing more.
Researchers working with Year Book materials should be alert to the fact that Latin record phrases like *tulit* coexist in those sources with Anglo-French narrative passages. The Latin portions typically preserve the formal entries of the court record, while the French portions record the pleading exchanges and judicial remarks. *Tulit* belongs firmly to the Latin record layer.
Because *tulit* appears almost exclusively in sources predating the gradual displacement of Latin from English court records — a process formalized for most proceedings by the Pleading in English Act 1362 and completed more fully by later reforms — its appearance in a source is itself a dating signal. A document using *tulit* in its record formula is drawing on or reproducing medieval practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the essential gloss: *tulit*, from *ferre*, meaning "brought," used in old practice, with the example *tulit breve de recto* — he brought a writ of right — drawn from the Year Books, Michaelmas term, 1 Edward II. This single source entry is accurate and sufficient for the term's narrow scope. No other major historical legal dictionaries (Bouvier, Black, Tomlin) appear to have given the term a standalone entry, which is consistent with its character as a purely formulaic record word rather than a doctrinal term requiring extended definition. The absence of broader coverage is not a gap in the historical dictionaries but a reflection of the term's limited practical weight outside of archival and Year Book scholarship.
Burrill's treatment is representative of how nineteenth-century legal lexicographers handled Latin record terms: brief identification of the source language, grammatical derivation, a functional gloss, and a concrete example from a primary source. Researchers should not expect more from other dictionary sources on this term.
Jurisdictional Note
*Tulit* is a term of English common law origin and appears only in English legal records and sources derived from them. It has no meaningful presence in American legal materials and is not a term of practice in any modern jurisdiction.