Definition
An archaic writ of English common law — specifically, a writ of surcharge of pasture — that issued on behalf of a defendant who was being impleaded a second time in a county court for the offense of surcharging a common with cattle, where the same matter had previously been impleaded in that court and the cause had since been removed to one of the superior courts at Westminster. The writ was a procedural remedy against duplicative local proceedings, protecting a party already drawn into the Westminster courts from being harassed again at the county level for the same alleged overuse of common grazing land.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will be encountered almost exclusively in early English legal manuscripts, plea rolls, and register entries — not in modern case law or statutory material. Researchers working with medieval or early modern common law records, particularly those touching on rights of common and pasture, should recognize TURZ as a procedural writ rather than a substantive right. Its appearance in a source is a signal that a dispute over surcharge of common had already been escalated to Westminster, and that the writ was being used to prevent a parallel or resumed county court proceeding. The single surviving reference in the Law Mind corpus — Reg. Jud. 360 (Registrum Judiciale) — points to the writ's formulaic character: it was a standardized judicial writ, not a discretionary remedy shaped by individual courts. Researchers should not expect to find doctrinal development around TURZ; it is a procedural artifact, and its value in research is almost entirely historical and contextual.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the only corpus entry for TURZ and treats it concisely as a judicial writ lying in the specific circumstance of repeated impleading in a county court for surcharging a common, after removal of the earlier action to Westminster. Black's cross-references Reg. Jud. 360, the Registrum Judiciale, which was a standard formulary of writs used by English practitioners. The entry is descriptive rather than analytical, offering no doctrinal commentary. No other historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus addresses this term, and the absence of treatment in later editions of Black's or in Bouvier reflects how thoroughly obsolete the writ became after county court jurisdiction over common-law matters was reorganized and the old forms of action abolished. Researchers should note that the term's obscurity in secondary sources is itself informative: TURZ was a narrow, technical writ tied to a specific procedural posture that simply had no life outside the pre-abolition common law system.
Jurisdictional Note
TURZ is purely a relic of English common law procedure and has no recognized counterpart or analog in American, Scottish, or other jurisdictions. It has no operative legal force anywhere today.