Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "wills" or "wishes," used as the operative word in the formula of royal assent to a bill of supply in the Parliament of England. The full phrase — LE ROY REMERCIE SES BONS SUJETS, ACCEPTE LEUR BENEVOLENCE, ET AINSI LE VEUT (or the feminine equivalent, LA REINE) — translates as "The king [or queen] thanks his [or her] loyal subjects, accepts their benevolence, and thus wills it to be so." This formula was the prescribed verbal form by which the sovereign, acting through the Clerk of the Parliaments, gave royal assent to bills granting supply (taxation and revenue measures) to the Crown.
The term also appears in the context of common recovery and fine proceedings, where a deed to uses or note directing the operation of the fine or recovery to particular uses was associated with the same documentary tradition. This secondary usage, noted in Burrill, reflects the broader role of formal verbal formulae in English conveyancing and parliamentary procedure.
Common Confusion
VEUT should not be confused with LE ROY LE VEULT, which is the distinct formula of royal assent to ordinary public bills. The supply formula — LE ROY REMERCIE... ET AINSI LE VEUT — was reserved specifically for money bills and bills of supply, reflecting the constitutional distinction between the Crown's acceptance of a grant from the Commons and its simple assent to ordinary legislation. Researchers encountering either formula in parliamentary records should identify which class of bill is involved before assuming the formulas are interchangeable.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in English constitutional history, parliamentary procedure, or the history of taxation will encounter VEUT almost exclusively in its fixed formulaic context. It is not a free-standing operative term in legal instruments but a component of a ceremonial phrase with constitutional significance.
The formula matters because it encodes the constitutional relationship between Crown and Parliament over supply. Bills of supply originated exclusively in the House of Commons; the royal assent formula for such bills was deliberately distinct from the assent formula for other legislation, marking the special dignity of the Commons' grant. Blackstone's discussion at 1 Bl. Com. 184 — cited by Burrill — remains the standard primary reference for the parliamentary assent formulae and their distinctions.
Researchers in the Law Mind corpus should be attentive to two traps. First, because VEUT appears only within the longer formulaic phrase, searching for the isolated term in historical sources will return limited results; the complete phrase or its English translation is the more reliable search vector. Second, these formulae are products of Law French, a legal dialect that diverged substantially from both continental French and ordinary English, and the words carry technical meaning that standard French dictionaries will not fully illuminate.
For researchers tracing the history of parliamentary taxation or the constitutional limits on Crown prerogative over revenue, the supply assent formula is a useful documentary marker: its presence confirms that the instrument relates to a money bill, not general legislation, which carries implications for which chamber originated the measure and what procedural rules governed it.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's are in close agreement on the core meaning and context. Both identify VEUT as the concluding operative word in the royal assent formula for bills of supply, and both supply the same English translation. Burrill adds the Blackstone citation (1 Bl. Com. 184) and a secondary reference to Stephens' Commentaries (1 Steph. Com. 529–530) regarding the use of the term in the context of fines and recoveries — a dimension Black's omits.
Neither historical dictionary provides substantial analysis of the constitutional significance of the distinction between supply assent and ordinary assent formulae. For that dimension, researchers must go to Blackstone directly or to the parliamentary history literature. The dictionaries treat VEUT as a reference item rather than a doctrinal term, which accurately reflects its status: it is a word of ceremony and form, not a term generating legal doctrine in its own right.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively a product of English parliamentary law and has no direct counterpart in American legal practice. Colonial and early American legislative procedure did not carry forward the royal assent formulae after independence. Researchers in British Commonwealth jurisdictions may find residual use of the formula in older parliamentary records, but modern practice in the United Kingdom has moved to written and then to automated notification of royal assent.