Definition
A writ de perambulatione facienda (Latin: "for making a perambulation") was an English common law writ directed to the sheriff, commanding him to walk the boundary lines between two neighboring estates and fix those limits with certainty. The writ issued by mutual consent of both landowners when they were genuinely uncertain about — rather than adversarially disputing — the precise location of their shared boundaries. Because it required the agreement of both parties, it operated more as a cooperative legal mechanism for establishing facts on the ground than as contested adversarial litigation. The sheriff, acting under the writ's authority, would physically traverse the disputed boundary and mark its course, thereby settling the question in an official and binding manner.
The entry "WRIT DE" as it appears in the historical dictionaries is an abbreviated cross-reference, pointing the reader to the fuller entry for WRIT DE PERAMBULATIONE FACIENDA and its companion term DE RATIONALIBUS DIVISIS — a related writ available when parties could not agree and a genuine boundary dispute existed. Together these two writs formed the English common law toolkit for boundary resolution between private landowners.
Common Confusion
WRIT DE PERAMBULATIONE FACIENDA vs. DE RATIONALIBUS DIVISIS: These two writs are closely related but address materially different situations. The writ de perambulatione facienda required the consent of both parties and was appropriate where uncertainty, not hostility, existed. De rationalibus divisis (sometimes called a writ of right of boundaries) was available in contested cases where one party claimed the other had encroached. A researcher encountering either term in historical sources should determine which writ applied before drawing conclusions about the nature of the underlying dispute — a consensual boundary-fixing proceeding is legally and procedurally distinct from an adversarial boundary action.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a historical curiosity in American legal research. Bouvier expressly notes that the writ de perambulatione facienda was not known to have been adopted in practice in the United States, though several states developed analogous statutory mechanisms for boundary determination. Researchers working in early American property records, colonial-era land disputes, or comparative common law history may encounter the term in treatises or English sources imported into American legal argument. Its appearance in an American document would itself be a signal worth investigating — it likely reflects either English authority being cited analogically, or a jurisdiction with unusually close procedural ties to English practice.
The abbreviated entry form — "WRIT DE" — functions in the historical dictionaries as a stub or cross-reference head. Researchers using Black's or Bouvier's in scanned or digitized form should be aware that the substantive content sits under the full Latin title, and keyword searches on "writ de" alone may surface this stub without the full entry. Navigating to WRIT DE PERAMBULATIONE FACIENDA and DE RATIONALIBUS DIVISIS will yield the operative text.
For researchers tracing the lineage of modern boundary and survey law, the writ's requirement of physical perambulation by an official — essentially a state-supervised survey — is a doctrinal ancestor of modern statutory processes for boundary establishment, though no direct procedural line of succession runs through American courts. The functional equivalent today would be a quiet title action or a court-ordered survey in disputed boundary litigation.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier's — are in close agreement on the substance. Each describes a writ directed to the sheriff, requiring consent of both parties, for the purpose of perambulating and fixing boundaries. All three cite Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium (Fitzh. N.B.) as authority, which is the standard medieval English treatise on writs and the appropriate primary source for this term.
Bouvier adds the most useful research note: the explicit statement that the writ was not known to have been adopted in American practice, followed by a reference to several states having developed analogous procedures — though the surviving text in the source material is truncated and does not identify those states. This is a gap in the historical dictionary record. Researchers seeking to identify which states Bouvier referenced will need to consult the full original edition rather than abbreviated or digitized excerpts.
Neither Black's edition adds material beyond Fitzherbert. The entries are functionally identical across the 1st and 2nd editions, suggesting no meaningful evolution in the understanding of the term between those publications. This is unsurprising for a writ that had already become a historical artifact by the time Black's first appeared in 1891.
Jurisdictional Note
The writ was an English common law instrument and does not appear to have been formally received into American practice. Modern boundary disputes in all U.S. jurisdictions are resolved through statutory quiet title actions, survey proceedings, or declaratory judgment — not through any writ mechanism traceable to this form.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Extraordinary Writs and Habeas Corpus — 28 USC 2241-2255 (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia)
Coram Nobis and Other Extraordinary Writs (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)