Definition
A certificate issued under English law to a private individual who successfully prosecuted a felon to conviction. The certificate — and its accompanying exemption from compulsory parish and ward offices — was transferable, giving it practical market value. Under 10 & 11 Will. III, c. 23 (1699), the original recipient or first assignee of the certificate was exempted from all parish and ward offices within the parish or ward where the felony had been committed. The exemption covered the burdensome civic duties that English law imposed on local residents, such as serving as churchwarden, overseer of the poor, or constable. A holder who did not want the exemption personally could sell the certificate to someone who wished to avoid those offices.
The term derives from Tyburn, the site near present-day Marble Arch in London where public executions were carried out for centuries. The connection is purely historical and contextual: the certificate became associated with felony prosecutions, which, for serious offenses, ended in execution at Tyburn.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "A certificate given to one who prosecutes a felon to conviction, exempting them from certain parish and ward offices."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A certificate given to one who prosecutes a felon to conviction, exempting him from certain parish and ward offices."
Editorial note: Common and legal usage align closely here because the term has no life outside its specific historical-legal context. The word "Tyburn" is the only element a modern reader might encounter independently, and that encounter will be geographical or historical rather than legal. Researchers should note that the common definitions, accurate as far as they go, omit the transferability of the certificate — the feature that gave it economic significance and generated the secondary market that made it legally interesting.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a historical research term. It will appear in English legal materials from approximately 1699 through the early nineteenth century, particularly in materials touching on parish administration, private prosecution, and the law of constables. Researchers should be aware of three practical points.
First, the statute authorizing the ticket (10 & 11 Will. III, c. 23) is the controlling legal instrument. Bouvier's is the only historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus that cites it; Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence give the bare definition without the statutory anchor. Any corpus research into how this exemption operated in practice requires the statute, not just the dictionary entry.
Second, the transferability of the certificate is legally significant and historically underreported. Because the original holder could assign the exemption, Tyburn tickets circulated as a kind of informal tradeable instrument. This aspect of the ticket connects it to broader questions about the commodification of public duties in English parish law — a connection that the historical dictionaries in this corpus do not make explicit.
Third, the ticket's practical importance faded as English legal reform dismantled the system of compulsory parish offices in the nineteenth century. By the time American legal dictionaries were consolidating English common law terms, the Tyburn ticket was already a historical curiosity rather than an operative instrument. American corpus sources will reference it only in derivative or comparative contexts; it has no independent American legal history.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in complete agreement on the core definition, which is unsurprising given that the term describes a single, specific, abolished institution. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence give identical one-line entries. Bouvier adds the most value by identifying the governing statute and citing Bacon's Abridgement under the heading "Constable (C)," which locates the ticket within the administrative law of local officers rather than treating it as a pure criminal law instrument — a useful reminder of where this term actually lived in the doctrinal structure of English law.
None of the historical dictionaries notes the transferability of the certificate or the secondary market it generated. None notes the date of the statute's practical obsolescence. Researchers relying solely on these entries will have an accurate but thin picture.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Parish Officers (English Law); Private Prosecution (Historical); Constables (English Parish Administration)