Definition
De ingressu (Latin: "of entry") is the historical Latin designation for a writ of entry — a common law real action by which a person claimed the right to recover possession of land that had been wrongfully withheld. The writ alleged a defect in the title or possession of the current holder, tracing the chain of unlawful possession to show that the defendant had no valid right to occupy the land.
As a form, de ingressu identifies the class of writs collectively known as writs of entry. These writs were a principal mechanism of medieval and early modern English property law for resolving disputes over freehold land, distinct from the possessory assizes (such as novel disseisin) and from the older, more cumbersome real actions like the writ of right.
Common Confusion
De ingressu is not itself a single writ but a Latin label for an entire family of writs of entry. The source material in historical registries (Registrum Originalium, 227b et seq.) lists numerous specific writs grouped under this heading, each tailored to a different factual scenario — entry sur disseisin, entry in the per, entry in the per and cui, and others. Researchers who encounter de ingressu in a historical source should understand it as pointing to this broader class, not to a single standardized form.
Do not confuse de ingressu with an action of ejectment. By the eighteenth century, the fictional action of ejectment had largely displaced the old writs of entry in common law courts, but the writs of entry — and their Latin designations — continued to appear in legal literature, registries, and equity pleadings well after their practical obsolescence.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
The writs gathered under de ingressu were classified by the number of steps or "degrees" of alienation through which the wrongful possession had passed:
- Entry in the per: The plaintiff claimed the defendant entered through (per) a disseisor — that is, the wrongdoer himself still held the land.
- Entry in the per and cui: The plaintiff claimed the defendant entered through and to whom (per et cui) — the land had passed one step beyond the original disseisor.
- Entry in the cui in vita: A widow's action claiming land aliened by her husband during coverture without her consent.
Beyond three degrees of removal, the common law generally required the plaintiff to resort to a writ of right rather than a writ of entry, reflecting the graduated structure of real actions in medieval English procedure.
Why It Matters in Research
De ingressu appears most heavily in pre-nineteenth century English sources — year books, Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, and the Registrum Originalium — and in American sources that were transcribing or analyzing the inherited common law before statutory reform swept away the old real actions. Researchers working in colonial American land records, early state court pleadings, or treatises written before the Field Code reforms of the mid-nineteenth century will encounter this term.
The critical research trap is treating de ingressu as a single writ with fixed content. Because the term is a class designation, its procedural requirements, limitations periods, and applicable defenses varied by the specific subtype. When a historical document refers to a "writ of entry" without specifying the subtype, the Registrum Originalium (which both Black's editions cite as "Reg. Orig. 227b et seq.") is the foundational primary source for identifying which variant applied.
American adoption of the writ of entry was uneven. Several states preserved writs of entry by statute into the nineteenth century — Massachusetts being the most prominent example — long after England and other American jurisdictions had moved to ejectment. Any research touching New England land title disputes of the eighteenth or early nineteenth century should account for this persistence.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry, though fragmentary in this source record, references conversion of tenures into socage, signaling the connection between writs of entry and the broader transformation of English landholding away from feudal tenure — context that shapes how these writs are discussed in treatises on real property history.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core identification: de ingressu means a writ of entry, and all point to the same location in the Registrum Originalium (227b et seq.) as the authoritative registry source. This uniformity across editions of Black's and in Rapalje & Lawrence reflects the term's settled, technical character — it is not a concept over which legal dictionaries disagreed, but a Latin label for an established procedural category.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply is any substantive treatment of the writ's internal structure, the degree system, or the historical context of its eventual obsolescence. For that depth, researchers must move beyond dictionary sources to Blackstone's Commentaries (Book III), Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, or modern property law history scholarship. The dictionary entries function as finding aids pointing to the Registrum, not as self-contained explanations.
Jurisdictional Note
England abolished the old real actions, including writs of entry, by the Real Property Limitation Act 1833 and subsequent reform legislation, replacing them with modern possessory remedies. In the United States, abolition occurred jurisdiction by jurisdiction through the nineteenth century, generally as part of broader procedural code reform. Massachusetts retained a statutory writ of entry for certain land title purposes longer than most states; researchers should check the specific jurisdiction's date of abolition before assuming inapplicability.