This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chambers, Ephraim, ed. (1728). "Cape". Cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1st ed.). James and John Knapton, et al.
In archaic English law, a cape was a judicial writ concerning a plea of lands and tenements; so called, as most writs are, from the word which carried the chief intention of the writ.
The writ was divided into cape magnum, or the grand cape, and cape parvum, or the petit cape. While they were alike in their effect, as to taking hold of immovable things, they differed in the following circumstances: first, in that the cape magnum lay before, and the cape parvum after; second, cape magnum summoned the defendant to answer to the default, in addition to answering to the plaintiff, while cape parvum only summoned the defendant to answer to the default. It might have been called petit cape, not because of small force, but because it was contained in few words.
Cape magnum was defined in the Old Natura Brevium as follows:
Cape parvum was defined was thus defined, Ibid.
Cape ad valentiam, a species of cape magnum so called from the end to which it tends, was thus described,