Definition
A writ directing the sheriff to summon a jury of matrons — that is, a panel of respectable married women or women of experience — to carry out the examination required by the writ de ventre inspiciendo. The phrase is Latin for "you are to cause to come so many matrons." The writ was a procedural instrument, not a substantive remedy in itself; it functioned as the mechanism by which the jury of matrons was assembled and empaneled to perform the physical inspection authorized under the companion writ.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical common law sources and will not be encountered in modern practice. Researchers encountering it in older reports, plea rolls, or treatises should understand that it operates as a satellite writ — it cannot be understood in isolation from de ventre inspiciendo, which provided the underlying authority for the examination. The two writs appear together in the historical record, and indexing in older digest systems may list proceedings under either term or neither, instead cataloguing the matter under pregnancy, execution of judgment, or jury of matrons.
The practical context matters: venire facias tot matronas arose most frequently in criminal cases where a condemned woman pleaded pregnancy as a basis for respiting execution (pleading the belly), and in civil matters involving disputed pregnancy or fetal inheritance claims. Researchers working in early American colonial or post-colonial records may find the writ used in execution-related proceedings before the practice fell away. By the nineteenth century, statutory reform in both England and the United States largely displaced the common law machinery surrounding jury of matrons, and the writ effectively became obsolete.
Because the writ belongs to a cluster of related procedural instruments, researchers should trace the full chain: the underlying claim or plea, the issuance of de ventre inspiciendo, and then this writ as the summoning mechanism. Records may be split across different series depending on the court's filing practices.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides a compact but sufficient entry: the writ summons a jury of matrons to execute the writ de ventre inspiciendo. This formulation correctly identifies the writ's instrumental character — it serves the examination process rather than authorizing it. Historical dictionaries offer little more on this term because its operational content was entirely dependent on the companion writ and the common law practice surrounding jury of matrons. Older English legal dictionaries, including Jacob's Law Dictionary and Tomlin's Law Dictionary, treat the jury of matrons and de ventre inspiciendo at greater length but treat venire facias tot matronas as a procedural consequence requiring little independent explanation. This gap in historical dictionary treatment reflects the writ's status as a mechanical step in a larger process rather than a doctrinally significant instrument in its own right.
Jurisdictional Note
The writ is a creature of English common law and was received into early American practice in jurisdictions that adopted the common law wholesale. Its use in American courts was always limited and largely disappeared with nineteenth-century procedural reform. No modern jurisdiction uses this writ in active practice.