Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "within fifteen days" or "on the fifteenth day." In the historical practice of the English common law courts, in quindena designated a specific return day — one of the fixed days in the court calendar on which writs were returnable and parties were required to appear or answer. The day fell fifteen days after a feast day or other calendrical anchor point, calculated by the inclusive counting method of medieval reckoning.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in early English pleading records, writs, and procedural texts — primarily those predating the reforms of the nineteenth century that abolished the old system of return days. Researchers working in pre-reform common law materials, particularly plea rolls, Year Books, and treatises on common law pleading, will encounter in quindena as a dating and scheduling marker rather than a substantive legal concept. Its significance is procedural and calendrical.
The chief trap for researchers is the medieval counting convention. When a source says "in quindena of [feast day]," the fifteen days are counted inclusively, meaning the feast day itself is day one. The actual calendar date is therefore fourteen days after the feast, not fifteen. This produces real errors in reconstructing the timeline of historical proceedings if the researcher applies modern exclusive counting.
In quindena must be understood alongside the full system of return days — dies in quindena was one of a set of named return intervals including octave (eight days), quindene (fifteen days), and the three-week and one-month returns — all anchored to the major feasts of the liturgical calendar. A researcher who encounters only one such term without understanding the system will misread the procedural posture of an action.
This term connects directly to the study of mesne process, defaults, and continuances in early common law practice. The return day determined when a default could be recorded, when a continuance was required, and when judgment could be entered. Getting the date wrong means misreading the procedural record entirely.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core entry: "L. Lat. In fifteen days. One of the return days in the old practice of the English courts," with citations to Townshend's Pleadings and Reeves' History of English Law. This is accurate as far as it goes, but the entry is skeletal. Burrill confirms the phrase's function as a return day marker but does not explain the inclusive counting convention or situate in quindena within the broader architecture of the English return day system.
Reeves' History of English Law, cited by Burrill, remains one of the more useful sources for understanding how return days operated in practice across different periods of English legal history. Townshend's Pleadings provides the procedural context in which these terms appeared in actual court documents.
No major modern legal dictionary carries this term, which accurately reflects its status as a piece of defunct procedural vocabulary with no living application outside historical and legal-historical research.