Definition
Journeys account (also rendered journeys accomptes) was a procedural remedy in English common law practice allowing a plaintiff to sue out a new original writ within a reasonable time after a prior writ had abated through no fault of the plaintiff. The replacement writ did not require the plaintiff to begin the action entirely afresh in terms of timing; instead, the law allowed a grace period calculated by reference to the number of days the plaintiff would reasonably require to travel to the court — the "journeys" being literally counted (accomptes) for this purpose. The doctrine functioned as a quasi-continuance, preserving the plaintiff's right of action despite the technical failure of the first writ.
The practical effect was significant: because the new writ was treated as linked to the original proceeding rather than as a wholly independent action, statutes of limitations and other time-sensitive defenses could not be interposed merely because the first writ had abated and the plaintiff needed time to reach the court to file again.
Common Language
This section is omitted. Journeys account is pure legal jargon of historical English practice with no meaningful counterpart in ordinary modern or historical English usage. The individual words "journey" and "account" carry their familiar meanings, but the compound phrase as a legal term of art has no common-usage analog that would create interpretive confusion.
Common Confusion
Journeys account is sometimes loosely grouped with the doctrine of allowance of time after nonsuit, but the two are distinct. A nonsuit arose from a plaintiff's voluntary withdrawal or failure to appear; journeys account applied where the writ itself abated through external cause without fault of the plaintiff. The new writ issued under journeys account was treated as a continuation of the original action, not as a fresh suit following a nonsuit. Researchers encountering both concepts in historical pleading materials should take care not to conflate them.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers are most likely to encounter journeys account in pre-nineteenth-century English common law pleading materials, treatises on practice, and American sources from the colonial and early republic periods when English forms of action were still in active use. Several points of navigational importance:
First, the doctrine became obsolete with the abolition of the forms of action in England under the Common Law Procedure Acts of the mid-nineteenth century and the subsequent adoption of code pleading in American jurisdictions. Modern practice has no direct functional equivalent, though tolling doctrines and savings statutes serve related purposes. A researcher who finds the term in a nineteenth-century American case should determine whether the jurisdiction had already moved to code pleading, which would make the reference historical or analogical rather than operative.
Second, the phrase "journeys accomptes" appears in its French Law form in some older sources. Researchers working with Law French materials should recognize both spellings and note that "accomptes" is the historical rendering of what later sources anglicize as "account" in the sense of reckoning or counting.
Third, because journeys account operated as a quasi-continuance, its invocation in historical cases had direct implications for statute of limitations analysis. When tracing a limitation defense in an early common law case, researchers should check whether the plaintiff's counsel raised a journeys account argument to defeat a stale-writ objection.
Fourth, the term does not appear in many American legal dictionaries of the nineteenth century, having fallen from active use before American legal lexicography matured. Its primary documentary life is in English practice treatises and in American pleading manuals that reproduced or adapted English forms.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary provides the foundational entry and the essential explanation: journeys account permitted a plaintiff to sue out a new writ after abatement of the first writ, with the allowable time computed by reference to the number of days needed to journey to court — hence the name. Bouvier characterizes the new writ as "quasi a continuance," which is the key conceptual point: the remedy was not merely a fresh start but a procedurally connected substitute preserving the plaintiff's position.
Bouvier's entry is brief and does not explore the boundaries of the doctrine — for instance, what counted as abatement "without fault," how courts calculated the journey-days in practice, or how the doctrine interacted with specific limitation statutes. Researchers requiring that depth will need to look beyond the dictionary shelf to English practice treatises such as those of Tidd or Chitty on pleading, where the procedural mechanics are treated more fully.
No other dictionary in the Law Mind shelf addresses journeys account, which reflects the term's early obsolescence in American practice.
Jurisdictional Note
Journeys account was a doctrine of English common law and was carried into American colonial and early republic practice in jurisdictions following English forms of action. It did not survive code pleading reform in any American jurisdiction as an operative doctrine. Any encounter with the term in American materials after roughly the mid-nineteenth century is almost certainly historical or argumentative by analogy rather than a live procedural invocation.