WRITS CLOSE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

WRITS CLOSEAuthored

The Law Mind • 980 words

Definition

Writs close (Latin: brevia clausa) are writs directed to the sheriff or other specified officer, as distinguished from writs patent, which were directed openly to lords or to the public generally. In medieval English practice, a writ close was sealed and folded so that its contents could not be read without breaking the seal — making it private in character and addressed to a particular recipient. Writs patent, by contrast, were open documents, unfolded and publicly readable.

The distinction was most prominent in writs of right, where some forms of the writ were issued as patent writs directed to the lord of the fee, and others were issued as close writs directed to the sheriff. The choice of form carried procedural significance: it determined who received the command, through what channel the matter would proceed, and in which court the action would be heard.

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Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Close" as an adjective means near, shut, or confined. As a verb, to shut or conclude.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Close" (adjective) — shut fast; closed; with no opening; confined; secret; not open to public inspection.

The legal term draws directly on this older sense of "close" as sealed or shut — a writ physically closed and addressed privately to a specific officer. Researchers should not confuse this usage with "close" meaning conclusion or termination, which is its dominant modern legal meaning in contexts such as closing arguments or real estate closings.

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Common Confusion

WRITS CLOSE should not be confused with LETTERS CLOSE (litterae clausae), though the underlying concept of a sealed, private royal document is the same. Letters close were royal communications of a general administrative character; writs close were specifically judicial or quasi-judicial instruments commanding action in a legal proceeding. The terminological overlap in historical sources can mislead researchers into conflating the two. Additionally, modern use of the word "close" in legal contexts — real estate closings, closing arguments, closing agreements — bears no historical or conceptual relationship to writs close.

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Why It Matters in Research

Writs close is a historical term of English practice with almost no living procedural significance, but it appears with some regularity in early common law sources and in histories of English legal procedure. Researchers encountering the term in Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, Reeves' History of English Law, or early Year Book materials need to understand that the close/patent distinction signals the procedural pathway of the action — specifically, whether the writ ran to the sheriff (close) or to the lord of the fee (patent) in a writ of right.

The distinction matters for understanding why certain real property actions were heard in the royal courts while others proceeded in the lord's court. A writ of right patent gave the lord jurisdiction; a writ of right close directed the sheriff and brought the matter into the king's courts. This jurisdictional underpinning is the substance behind what appears to be merely a formal distinction in how the writ was folded.

Burrill's entry notes that the term "close" was still occasionally applied to writs even in the nineteenth century, meaning researchers working with American materials from the early republic may encounter it in a residual or ornamental sense, without the full medieval procedural context. Flag those usages carefully — the term may survive as nomenclature after the underlying distinction has lost operative meaning.

For researchers working in the Law Mind corpus, this term connects most naturally to the broader history of English writs and prerogative procedure. It is peripheral to modern writ doctrine but essential context for reading early common law sources accurately.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core entry, defining writs close as writs directed to the sheriff, in contrast to writs patent directed to the lord. Burrill cites Reeves' History of English Law (volume 3) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium as authorities, both standard primary sources for English writ history. The entry notes the distinction was most alive in writs of right and that the term retained occasional application into the modern period.

Burrill's entry is truncated in available sources — the final sentence breaks off mid-phrase — but the substance is intact. No significant divergence exists among historical dictionaries on this point; the close/patent distinction is well-settled as a matter of historical description. What historical sources collectively underemphasize is the jurisdictional consequence of the distinction: they tend to describe the formal difference (sealed vs. open, sheriff vs. lord) without fully explaining why that difference determined the forum and the nature of the proceeding.

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Jurisdictional Note

Writs close as a distinct procedural category belongs entirely to English common law history. American courts inherited the writ system but the close/patent distinction never acquired independent doctrinal significance in American practice. Researchers working in English legal history prior to the nineteenth century will encounter it; researchers working in American law after the founding will encounter it only as historical reference.

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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

Coram Nobis and Other Extraordinary Writs (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia) — for context on the English writ system and its survival in modern practice.

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WRITS CLOSEmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

[L. Lat. brevia clausa.] In English practice. Writs directed to the sheriff, as distinguished from those which were directed to the lord, which were called patent. 3 Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, 45. This distinction prevailed in writs of rights, some being patent, and others close. F. N. B. 1 F. Id. 11 F. Cro. Eliz. 158. The term close (writ close) is still occasionally applied to writs, and is derived from the circumstance of the writ being close folded up, with the wax round it; being thus distinguished from a writ patent, which, although folded up, is sealed at the end of the label which issues from the same piece of parchment, and surrounds the writ. Sewell's Law of Sheriff, 372. Letters of the king, sealed with his great seal, directed to particular persons, and for particular purposes, which, not beCLOSE or CLAUSE ROLLS. [L. Lat. rotuli clausi.] Rolls preserved among the public records in England, containing the records of the writs or letters close, and other documents. 2 Bl. Com. 346. Hubback's Evid. of Succession, 619. * ** Mr. Hubback observes that these close or "clause" rolls contain many important documents relative to the prerogatives of the crown, and other matters of a very miscellaneous nature. Among their contents, he enumerates writs of summons to parliament, and for the expenses of knights, citizens and burgesses, proclamations, enrollments of deeds between party and party, liveries and seisins of land, with a great variety of instruments, too numerous to be recounted. Like the patent rolls, some of them are deposited in the Tower, and some at the Rolls' Chapels. The former comprise those from their earliest existing date, 6 John, A. D. 1204, to the end of the reign of Edward IV. The latter, beginning with Edward V. are continued down to a recent period. Hubback's Evid. of Succession, 619, 620.