Definition
A writ of proclamation was a procedural instrument of English common law, issued simultaneously with the writ of exigent (exigi facias), commanding the sheriff of the county where a defendant resided to make three public proclamations in the most conspicuous locations available — giving the defendant one final month of notice before outlawry could be pronounced against them. The writ operated as a mandatory precursor to outlawry, ensuring that no person could be declared an outlaw without at least the formal opportunity to appear and answer the charges against them.
Where the defendant resided in a county different from the one addressed by the exigent itself, a separate instrument known as a foreign writ of proclamation was issued to the sheriff of that other county. The two writs — exigent and proclamation — worked in tandem: the exigent commanded successive county court sessions to call the defendant forward, while the proclamation ensured that call was publicized locally and personally enough to reach the defendant before the ultimate sanction of outlawry fell.
Common Confusion
The writ of proclamation is easily conflated with the writ of exigent (exigi facias), and the two are indeed companion instruments. The critical distinction is functional: the exigent is the process that progressively demanded the defendant's appearance through repeated court calls, and the outlawry mechanism itself. The writ of proclamation is the notice component — the public-facing announcement that preceded and conditioned the exigent's ultimate effect. Neither could achieve outlawry alone. Researchers should also note that "proclamation" appears elsewhere in legal history as a general executive or royal act; the writ of proclamation is a specific, technical instrument within the outlawry process and should not be confused with royal proclamations or other executive declarations of that name.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of exclusively historical English law. Researchers will encounter it in pre-nineteenth-century English common law materials, early American colonial and post-colonial practice borrowed from English procedure, and legal history scholarship on the law of outlawry. It does not survive as a living procedural device in modern American or English law.
Several research traps apply. First, the writ of proclamation cannot be understood in isolation — it functions only within the outlawry sequence, which itself requires familiarity with the exigi facias and the process of successive essoins and county court calls. A researcher encountering a writ of proclamation in a historical record who does not also locate the companion exigent will have an incomplete picture of the proceeding.
Second, the statute authorizing the writ — 31 Elizabeth I, c. 3 — is the controlling legal source, and both Black's and Bouvier's cite it directly. Researchers working with materials predating that statute (1589) should be alert to the possibility that proclamation practice existed in different or less formalized form, and should not assume the Elizabethan statutory framework applies to earlier records.
Third, the foreign writ of proclamation introduces a jurisdictional wrinkle that may explain why two sheriffs appear in a single set of historical records relating to an outlawry proceeding. Bouvier's is the only dictionary source that explicitly names and defines the foreign variety; Black's omits it. This is a meaningful gap for anyone working with records where the defendant's county of residence differs from the court's county.
Fourth, the writ's practical significance is partly evidentiary: its issuance (or failure of issuance) could affect the validity of an outlawry. Historical litigation challenging outlawries sometimes turned on procedural compliance with the proclamation requirement.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in essential agreement on the substance of the writ. All three identify the statute 31 Elizabeth I, c. 3 as the authorizing authority, connect the writ to the exigent, and describe the sheriff's duty to make proclamations before outlawry could proceed.
Black's 2nd Edition is the most complete of the three for this entry, citing Blackstone's Commentaries (Book 3, page 284) and specifying both the number of proclamations (three) and the timing requirement (one month before outlawry). This is the most useful starting point for researchers needing the substantive rule.
Bouvier's adds the most procedurally distinctive information: it names and defines the foreign writ of proclamation as a subspecies issued when the defendant's county differs from the exigent's county, citing Reeve's History of English Law. This is a detail neither Black's edition includes, and it is substantively important for understanding how the writ operated across county lines.
Black's 1st Edition entry is fragmentary in the provided source material and adds little independent value beyond confirming the statutory basis.
Collectively, the historical dictionaries provide a reliable skeleton of the writ's operation but do not engage with its historical evolution before the Elizabethan statute, its practical administration, or the consequences of defective proclamation. For that depth, Reeve's History of English Law and Blackstone's Commentaries (Book 3) remain the primary reference points the dictionaries themselves direct researchers toward.
Jurisdictional Note
The writ of proclamation is an instrument of English law with no direct American statutory successor. Early American courts occasionally applied English outlawry procedure in the colonial and early republic period, but outlawry itself fell out of use in American practice, carrying the writ of proclamation with it. Researchers working in early American jurisdictions should treat any appearance of this writ as evidence of English procedural inheritance and investigate whether the local jurisdiction had formally adopted the relevant English statutes or practice.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Coram Nobis and Other Extraordinary Writs (criminal_240) — for context on the broader category of historical writs and their survival or obsolescence in modern practice.