COMES - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

COMESAuthored

The Law Mind • 1015 words

Definition

"Comes" functions in two distinct legal contexts:

1. As a pleading term (Latin: venit): A formal word of appearance used in common-law pleading to indicate that a party — typically the defendant — is present before the court. It appears at the opening of a plea or answer: "And the said [defendant], by [attorney], comes and defends..." The word signals the defendant's submission to the court's jurisdiction and readiness to plead. It was a term of art drawn from the style used in recording proceedings, not from live oral pleading.

2. As a Latin title (plural: comites): A companion, attendant, or official of rank. In historical European law and governance, the term designated a count or earl — the comes of the Franks corresponding to the Germanic graf and the English earl. As a title, comes carried administrative and judicial authority, particularly over territorial jurisdictions. Anderson's Dictionary cross-references this sense to CONSTABLE and COUNTY, reflecting the institutional lineage from Roman and Frankish administration.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Third-person singular simple present indicative of "come" — as in "she comes."

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The answer to the theme (dux) in a fugue — a musical term entirely unrelated to law.

Neither common usage touches the legal meaning. Researchers encountering "comes" in a plea or historical charter should not read it as an ordinary English verb of motion. In pleading, it is a formal legal signal of appearance and submission to jurisdiction. In early English and Continental legal records, it is a Latin title of office, not a verb at all.

Common Confusion

The two legal senses of "comes" — the pleading term and the title of rank — are unrelated and appear in entirely different document types. Researchers working in early English land records, royal charters, or Continental legal sources will encounter comes as a title (count/earl); researchers in common-law pleading records will encounter it as the appearance formula. The Latin plural comites appears almost exclusively in the titular sense. Context resolves the ambiguity, but the surface similarity can mislead.

Comes (pleading appearance) should also be distinguished from the related pleading formula "comes now," which persists in modern American practice as a stylistic convention even where formal common-law pleading requirements have been abolished.

Why It Matters in Research

For pleading records: "Comes" as an appearance formula is ubiquitous in common-law plea rolls, writs, and answer forms from medieval England through the nineteenth-century United States. Because it was part of the formal entry style rather than oral argument, it appears consistently across centuries of enrolled proceedings. Researchers should treat it as structural boilerplate — its presence marks the opening of a responsive pleading, not a substantive legal argument. Its disappearance in modern practice (following code pleading reforms beginning in the mid-nineteenth century) is a useful date marker: documents retaining the "comes and defends" formula are almost certainly pre-code or in jurisdictions slow to adopt procedural reform.

For titular records: The comes/comites sense is essential for reading Domesday Book, Anglo-Norman charters, Frankish capitularies, and the broader administrative record of early medieval Europe. Comes in this context is the root from which "county" and "constable" (comes stabuli, count of the stable) derive. Researchers tracing local jurisdiction, feudal tenure, or the development of county government will encounter this term repeatedly and need to distinguish it from the contemporary English "earl," which the Normans used interchangeably with comes in post-Conquest records.

The Law Mind corpus will contain both senses across very different source types: pleading manuals and form books for the appearance sense, and historical and constitutional sources for the titular sense. Anderson's cross-reference to COUNTY is the right navigational instinct — the institutional history of comes-as-count underlies the entire structure of English county governance.

Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier treats comes exclusively as a pleading term, explaining that it expressed appearance on the record and was not part of oral argument — a useful clarification that the formula was scribal convention rather than spoken performance. He notes the defendant "comes and defends," the standard formula.

Burrill provides the fuller account of the titular sense, tracing comes through its Latin root (comitor, to accompany) and its application across Frankish, German, and English institutions. His entry is the most historically rich of the three, situating the term within comparative European legal history.

Anderson's entry for comes is a redirect only — pointing to CONSTABLE and COUNTY — without independent definition. This is useful as a navigational signal but contributes nothing to understanding the term itself.

Collectively, the historical dictionaries treat the two senses as effectively separate entries rather than facets of one word, which is the correct approach. What they do not address is the transitional moment in American pleading when "comes now" survived as a stylistic remnant after the substantive content of the formula became legally meaningless — a gap researchers working in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American practice should note.

Jurisdictional Note

The pleading use of comes was standard across common-law jurisdictions in England and the American states through the mid-nineteenth century. Code pleading reforms (beginning with the New York Field Code of 1848) rendered it formally unnecessary, though it persisted as a stylistic convention in some American courts well into the twentieth century. The titular sense is primarily relevant to English, French, and broader European legal history and has no operative meaning in modern law.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Pleading (Common Law Forms); County (Origins and Governance); Feudal Tenure

COMESmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

In Pleading. A word used in a plea or answer which indicates the presence in court of the defendant. In a plea, the defendant says, "And the said CD, by E F. his attorney, comes, and deferds," etc. The word comes, venit, expresses the appearance of the defendant in court. It is taken from the style of the entry of the proceedings on the record, and formed no part of the viva vore pleading. It is, accordingly, not considered as, in strictness, con- stituting a part of the plea; 1 Chit. PL 411; Steph.

COMESmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

L. See CONSTABLE; COUNTY.

COMESmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

Lat. [pl. comites, from comitor, to accompany, or follow; L. Fr. comte.] A companion, follower or attendant. An official and honorary title of great antiquity, and very various application; originating the institutions of most of the early nations of Europe, but chiefly remarkable for its equal use in denoting the comte or count of the Franks, the grave, graf, or graff of the Germans, the countee of the Anglo-Normans, the caldorman, alderman, or shireman of the Saxons, and finally, the earl of the English and Scotch. 1 Bl. Com. 116, 398. Spelman. Termes de la Ley, voc. Countee. Ersk. Inst. b. 1, tit. 4, § 1. See Count, Countee, Alderman, Earl, Grave, Reeve, Schire-man. **The origin of this title has been traced by Spelman to the household or court of the Roman emperors, who gave the name of comites to their personal attendants, or those who belonged to their following or retinue, (comites vocabant quotquot e comitatu principis erant.) It came afterwards to be used (with the Græco-barb. Koµns) as a title not only of honor, but of office, and with no restriction as to grade in either; but its prevailing signification was that of chief, superintendent, or governor, (Gr. apxwr.) See Cod. 1. 32, 33, [34,] 34, 36. Cod. 12. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Nov. 8, cc. 2, 3, 5. Nov. 27. Thus, among other officers noticed at length by Spelman, the comites provinciarum were the rulers or governors of provinces, who combined the authority of a civil magistrate and judge, with the powers of a military commander. From these, according to the same writer, were immediately derived the comites of the lower ages. And see Feud. Lib. 1, tit. 1. Lib. 2, tit. 10. Among the Franks, Germans, and other early nations, the term comes was applied to one who was selected by the king from his own attendants, (e comitatu suo,) and sent to govern some city or territory, and from whom such territory, as well as the office itself, was called comitatus. A prominent feature of this officer was his judicial character. Spelman calls him expressly a judge, (reges e comitatu suo miserunt judicem,- munus comitis judiciarium fuit,) and refers to the use of the word in this sense, among the ancient Germans, as early as the time of Tacitus. See Comte. As to the introduction of this term into England, it may be observed that the title comes is found associated among the AngloSaxons, with some kind of territorial authority, at a period anterior to the division of the kingdom into counties, but its use does not appear to have been fully established until afterwards, when it was applied by

COMESn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

The answer to the theme (dux) in a fugue.

comesverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

third-person singular simple present indicative of come

comesnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

The answer to the theme, or dux, in a fugue.

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