Definition
Ingressu (also styled de ingressu) is an ancient writ of entry in English common law by which a plaintiff sought to recover possession of land to which the plaintiff claimed a right of entry. It belonged to the broader family of real actions and directed the defendant to yield up possession or answer in court for withholding it. The writ was formally abolished by the Real Property Limitation Act of 1833, which swept away most of the old real actions that had long fallen into practical disuse.
Common Confusion
Ingressu is sometimes loosely equated with the writ of entry generally, but it is more precisely one specific form within that family. The writs of entry varied by the number of "degrees" through which the wrongful possession had passed (in the per, per et cui, and post stages). Ingressu operated as a variant closely associated with the praecipe form — directing a defendant to do something or show cause — rather than the narrative-style writs that recited a chain of title defects. Rapalje and Lawrence note its alternative name, praecipe quod reddat ("command that he render"), which helps locate it within the praecipe subclass of real actions.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering ingressu will almost always find it in pre-1833 English materials: Year Books, early Chancery records, treatises on real property, and the older abridgments. A few practical points:
First, the abolition date of 1833 is a hard boundary. Any source citing ingressu as a live writ postdating the Real Property Limitation Act 1833 should be read critically — the reference is either historical or in error.
Second, ingressu sits within the taxonomy of real actions, which were already dying out well before 1833. Bracton, Littleton, and Coke each address the writ of entry family in terms that evolved over centuries; a reference to ingressu in a seventeenth-century treatise may describe practice that was already archaic in that writer's own time.
Third, the alternate name praecipe quod reddat is important for corpus searching. Medieval and early modern records frequently use the Latin formula rather than the shorthand "ingressu," and the two forms will not surface in the same keyword search. Researchers working in digitized Year Book collections or EEBO-era legal texts should run both search strings.
Fourth, because real actions were supplanted in practice by the action of ejectment long before formal abolition, case law on ingressu is sparse in the later common law reports. The substantive learning is concentrated in the older treatise literature rather than in reported decisions.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core: ingressu is an abolished English writ of entry by which a plaintiff sought recovery of land, abolished in 1833. Black's (both editions) offer identical text, suggesting later editions did not revisit the entry. Rapalje and Lawrence add the useful alternative name praecipe quod reddat, with a citation to Cowell's legal dictionary — a sixteenth-century source that confirms the term's deep antiquity.
None of the source dictionaries distinguish ingressu from related writs within the entry family, nor do they address the degrees of entry (per, per et cui, post) that were central to how real actions were pleaded. Researchers needing doctrinal depth on the mechanics of the writ of entry family will need to go beyond these dictionary entries to Bracton's De Legibus, Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, or the old abridgments.
Jurisdictional Note
Ingressu is exclusively English in origin and never transplanted meaningfully into American practice. American jurisdictions that inherited English common law bypassed the old real actions almost entirely in favor of ejectment, and no American state received ingressu as a working writ. The term appears in American legal dictionaries purely as a historical reference.