JOURNEYS ACCOUNTS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

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Definition

Journeys accounts is an obsolete English procedural term denoting a fresh writ issued after a prior writ had abated through no fault of the plaintiff. When a writ abated — that is, failed or became void — for reasons attributable to the court, the defendant, or circumstances outside the plaintiff's control, the plaintiff was entitled to sue out a new writ within a period of time calculated by reference to the distance the party had to travel to reach the court. The replacement writ issued under this rule was called a writ by journeys accounts. The doctrine effectively gave the plaintiff a second opportunity to pursue the action without being time-barred, provided the new writ was taken out as soon as reasonably possible after the abatement.

The underlying logic was equitable: a plaintiff should not lose a claim permanently because a writ failed through no fault of his own. The allowed time was not fixed but was computed based on how many days' journey the litigant needed to travel to court, making the remedy adaptive to practical geography in an era when distance was a significant variable in legal proceedings.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No standard entry. The component words "journey" (travel from one place to another) and "account" (a reckoning or calculation) carry ordinary meanings unrelated to the legal term.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Journey" — the travel of a day; a passage from one place to another. "Account" — a reckoning; a computation.

The legal term is a compound of these ordinary words used in their older, more literal senses: a computation (account) of days' journeys. Modern readers encountering the phrase in historical pleading records might misread it as referring to travel expenses or a financial ledger. It refers to neither. It is a procedural measurement device used to calculate the window within which a plaintiff could obtain a replacement writ.

Common Confusion

Journeys accounts is sometimes loosely conflated with the doctrine of abatement generally, but it is a distinct procedural remedy triggered by abatement rather than the doctrine of abatement itself. Abatement ends a writ; journeys accounts is the mechanism for reviving the plaintiff's ability to proceed. The two operate in sequence, not as synonyms. Researchers should also distinguish this term from statutes of limitations and from the common law rule against double pleading — journeys accounts addressed none of those doctrines directly, though it intersected with limitations questions in practice.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working in pre-nineteenth century English common law pleading records, Year Books, or early American colonial practice may encounter the phrase "writ by journeys accounts" in procedural contexts. Several points bear attention:

First, the doctrine is functionally extinct. No modern jurisdiction retains the writ system that gave rise to it. When the term appears in a historical source, it signals procedural context, not substantive law.

Second, the computation method matters for understanding timelines in historical litigation. The allowed window for the replacement writ was not arbitrary — it was calculated from the distance to court. A researcher reconstructing the timeline of a historical case may need to account for this when evaluating whether a subsequent writ was timely.

Third, the term surfaces primarily in English practice materials. American colonial courts inherited English forms and early American pleading treatises sometimes reproduce the term, but the concept was largely displaced by statutory reform of civil procedure well before the Field Code reforms of the mid-nineteenth century.

Fourth, the phrase "journeys accounts" will not appear in modern procedural codes or rules. If it appears in a historical American court record, it almost certainly reflects direct transplantation from English practice manuals rather than any distinctly American development.

Fifth, researchers should be alert to variant spellings and Latin equivalents. Burrill records the Latin as diætæ computatæ (computed days' journeys) and the Law French as journes accompts or journées accomptes. Historical records may use any of these forms interchangeably.

Historical Dictionary Support

The three source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core content, with Burrill adding the most analytical depth. Black's first and second editions are nearly identical: both describe the term as an obsolete English practice writ, explain that it issued when a former writ abated without the plaintiff's fault, and tie the name to the journey-length computation. Neither edition offers more than a compressed summary.

Burrill is more instructive. He supplies the Law French and Latin forms, translates the term precisely as "journeys computed" or "days' journeys reckoned," and frames the doctrine as applying when a fresh writ is issued "as soon as possible, or within a reasonable time" after abatement. Burrill's emphasis on the reasonableness standard is a useful gloss that the Black's entries omit — it clarifies that the doctrine was not mechanical but involved judicial assessment of diligence.

What the historical dictionaries collectively do not address is the precise mechanism of computation or how courts determined the number of days' journeys attributable to a given distance. That detail would require consultation of original English pleading treatises and practice manuals from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The dictionary record, taken alone, confirms the existence and general function of the doctrine but does not reconstruct its operational detail.

Jurisdictional Note

Journeys accounts was a doctrine of English common law pleading. It did not develop independently in any American jurisdiction and was never codified in American statutory law. Its appearance in American legal materials is confined to early colonial and post-colonial practice that closely tracked English forms. By the time American civil procedure was reformed through statutory codes in the nineteenth century, the concept had no surviving procedural analogue.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses historical English writ practice or the abatement and revival of writs. The estates and accounting entries identified (Fiduciary Accounting, Contested Accountings, Accounting Malpractice) address a distinct meaning of "accounts" and are not relevant to this term.

JOURNEYS ACCOUNTSmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

In English practice. The name of a writ (now obsolete) which might be sued out where a former writ had abated without the plaintiff's fault. The length of time allowed for taking it out depended on the length of the journey the party must make to reach the court; whence the name.

JOURNEYS ACCOUNTSmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

In English practice. The name of a writ (now obsolete) which might be sued out where a former writ had abated without the plaintiff's fault. The length of time allowed for taking it out depended on the Iength of the journey the party must make to reach the court; whence the name.

JOURNEYS ACCOUNTSmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

[L. Fr. journes accompts, journees accomptes; L. Lat. diætæ computatæ.] Properly, journeys computed; days' journeys computed or reckoned. A term applied in practice to a fresh writ issued as soon as possible, or within a reasonable time after the abatement of a former one; the second writ being called a writ by journeys accounts. So termed from the old practice of computing the time allowed for the purpose, by days' journeys, which the party was obliged to make to the chancery, (a moveable court,) in order to purchase the writ. See infra. *** The practice of allowing writs by journeys accounts was considered in Spencer's case, 6 Co. 9 b, 10, where it was traced to Bracton, fol. 176. It was again discussed at considerable length in Kinsey v. Heyward, 1 Ld. Raym. 433, 435, where Selden's explanation of the term was quoted by Treby, C. J. It has been recently considered in the English reports, and the phrase itself is sometimes used even in American law. 7 Man. & Gr. 763, 773, note. Id. 774, 784, note. 8 Cranch's R. 84-93. The precise meaning of the phrase has generally not been clearly apprehended, owing to the uncouthness of its form, which is merely the L. Fr. journees accomptes Anglicized, without regard to the proper meaning of the words. The L. Lat. diætæ computatæ (days' journeys computed) sufficiently shows what the proper translation should be. The origin of the phrase is thus explained by Selden, as quoted by Treby, C. J. ubi supra. The chancery being anciently a moveable court, and following the king's court, and the writs being to be purchased out of the said court, the party who purchased the second writ was bound to apply to the king's court as hastily (that he might obtain the second writ) as the distance of the place would allow, accounting twenty miles for every day's journey; and, for this reason, he was to show in the second writ, that he had purchased his second writ as hastily as he could, accounting the days' journeys he had to the king's court. Hence the second writ was said to be brought per diætas computatas, (by days' journeys accounted,) or, in French, par journeis accomptes. See Selden's Diss. ad Fletam, c. 8, sect. 1.

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