Definition
Latin: "And of this he puts himself upon the country." A formal Latin phrase used at the conclusion of a common-law plea in bar by way of traverse. When a defendant traversed — that is, denied — a material allegation in the plaintiff's declaration, the plea concluded with this phrase, signaling that the defendant submitted the disputed question of fact to determination by a jury (the "country"). It was the defendant's formal demand for, and submission to, trial by jury on the issue raised by the traverse.
The phrase operated as a technical closing formula. Without it, or its accepted equivalent, a traverse plea was incomplete. The literal Latin survived into modern pleading practice in translated form: "and of this he puts himself upon the country" appeared in English-language pleadings long after Latin was otherwise abandoned in the courts.
Common Confusion
This phrase is sometimes loosely grouped with "et hoc paratus est verificare" as if both served the same function. They do not. "Et hoc paratus est verificare" concluded a plea that was to be verified — typically by witnesses, in certain older contexts — rather than submitted to the jury. "Et de hoc ponit se super patriam" is specifically the jury-submission formula. In the classical common-law system, the distinction between verification and jury trial was procedurally significant. Researchers should not treat the two as interchangeable when analyzing historical pleadings.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is a reliable signal in historical pleading records. When you encounter it in a common-law record — whether in a plea roll, a reported case, or a treatise on pleading — it marks the close of a traverse and tells you that the parties joined issue on a fact question destined for the jury. Its presence (or absence) was not merely formal: a defective conclusion to a traverse could be challenged, and pleading manuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave considerable attention to the precise wording required.
Researchers working in pre-code pleading materials should note that the corresponding plaintiff's formula was "et hoc paratus est verificare" ("and this he is ready to verify") when the plaintiff traversed, with the jury-submission conclusion following. The mirror-image structure of these formulas helps identify which party was traversing and what posture the case was in at a given moment in the record.
The phrase largely disappeared from American practice with the adoption of code pleading in the mid-nineteenth century (beginning with the New York Field Code of 1848) and from English practice with the Common Law Procedure Act 1852, which swept away much of the formal Latin machinery. After those reforms, the substance — jury demand and issue joinder — was accomplished by simpler procedural mechanisms. Researchers encountering the phrase in materials after those dates are likely working with a jurisdiction that retained common-law forms longer than average, or with a practitioner who preserved the old formula by habit.
Because the phrase marks the moment of issue joinder, it is also significant for understanding the history of the right to jury trial. Treatises on the subject — Gould's Pleading, Stephen's Treatise on the Principles of Pleading, and Chitty's Pleading are the standard sources — use this formula extensively and discuss the consequences of its omission or defective use.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Second Edition (Supplemental) gives the translation accurately — "And of this he puts himself upon the country" — and identifies the context correctly as the conclusion of a common-law plea in bar by way of traverse, noting that the literal translation was retained in modern form. The entry is spare, which is appropriate for what is essentially a term of art whose meaning is exhausted by its function in the pleading sequence.
What the historical dictionaries do not fully convey is the mechanical importance of the formula. The nineteenth-century pleading treatises are far more instructive on this point than any dictionary entry. Stephen on Pleading, for instance, carefully distinguishes between the traverse proper and its conclusion, treating the jury-submission formula as a distinct and indispensable element. That nuance — that the phrase was not mere ornament but a substantive procedural act — is largely invisible in dictionary-style treatments.
No significant divergence exists among historical sources on the meaning of this phrase. It is one of the more stable Latin formulas in the common-law vocabulary.
Jurisdictional Note
The formula belongs to the common-law pleading tradition shared by England and the American states that followed English common law. Its practical life in American courts ended jurisdiction by jurisdiction as code pleading was adopted, generally between 1848 and the 1880s. English courts moved away from it after 1852. Jurisdictions that retained common-law forms into the twentieth century — certain federal courts and a handful of states — may preserve isolated examples of the formula well past its general disappearance.