Definition
A writ commanding the election or selection of a verderer in the royal forest. The writ directed the appropriate officers or forest inhabitants to choose a verderer — a crown official responsible for overseeing the vert and venison of the king's forest — when a vacancy arose in that office. The term is Latin, meaning roughly "for choosing a verderer," and the writ was part of the broader machinery of English forest law.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is a historical curiosity term rather than a research navigation challenge. Viridario eligendo has no modern legal application; it survives only in historical records of English forest administration and in the writ registers that document pre-modern royal procedure.
Researchers encountering this term are almost certainly working in one of two contexts: (1) the history of English royal forests and forest courts, or (2) the study of original writs and the Register of Original Writs (Registrum Omnium Brevium / Reg. Orig.) as a legal form-book. Both Black's editions cite Reg. Orig. 177 as the authoritative source, and researchers should go there directly for the writ's formal text and procedural context.
The key corpus connection is the verderer as an officer. Understanding viridario eligendo requires understanding what verderers actually did — they were elected officers of the forest with judicial and administrative functions, particularly attending the forest courts (the Court of Attachments, or woodmote) and certifying presentments up to the Justice Seat. The writ itself is essentially an election-enabling instrument, not a judicial writ in the ordinary sense.
Because this writ appears in the Register of Original Writs, it belongs to the same family of procedural forms as other administrative and prerogative writs. Researchers working in the history of English administrative law or the writ system will find it most naturally situated alongside other forest-specific writs and the literature on forest eyres.
There is no American reception of this writ. English forest law, including the office of verderer, was never transplanted to the colonies or states. Any reference to viridario eligendo in American legal sources would be antiquarian rather than operative.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary give nearly identical one-line entries: "A writ for choice of a verderer in the forest," citing Reg. Orig. 177. The second edition adds only a minor punctuation variant. Neither edition elaborates on the office of verderer, the forest law context, or the procedural occasion for the writ — researchers are left to supply that context from other sources.
What both editions capture correctly is the writ's narrow, administrative purpose. It is not a writ of right, a prerogative writ of the Mandamus or Certiorari family, or a writ of process in litigation. It is an enabling instrument for a specific electoral or appointment event within the forest administration. The historical dictionaries, by citing Reg. Orig. directly, point researchers to the correct primary source, which is their chief value here.
No other standard historical legal dictionary (Tomlin's, Bouvier's, Jacob's) is referenced in the available source material for this term, which suggests it was treated as sufficiently obscure that brief citation-and-definition treatment was considered adequate.
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Jurisdictional Note
Exclusively English in origin and application. Forest law of the medieval and early modern English crown had no equivalent in American, Scottish, or colonial legal systems. Research use is confined to English legal history.
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