Definition
An archaic Law French term appearing in old English legal texts with two related meanings: (1) an action or suit — the entire legal proceeding brought before a court; and (2) a plea, in either the ancient or modern sense — a formal allegation or response made by a party within such a proceeding. In its broader usage, plee encompasses the whole of a legal action, whether real (concerning land and property rights) or personal (concerning obligations and injuries between persons). In narrower usage, it refers to a specific pleading, such as a plea in bar (plee barre), by which a defendant seeks to defeat the plaintiff's claim outright.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in current general use. Archaic or obsolete.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not attested as a standard English entry. The anglicized form "plea" carries the ordinary meaning of an appeal or entreaty, as in begging or imploring.
The gap here is directional: the common English word "plea" descends in part from the same root as plee, but plee in legal sources refers to the full procedural framework of an action — not merely a single spoken appeal. A researcher encountering plee in a medieval or early modern text should not read it as synonymous with the modern criminal-procedure sense of "guilty plea."
Common Confusion
Plee and plea are historically related but not interchangeable in legal sources. Plea in modern usage has narrowed to mean a defendant's formal response to a criminal charge (guilty, not guilty, no contest) or, in civil practice, a formal allegation. Plee in old English sources often means the action itself — the suit as a whole — not merely one party's statement within it. Researchers who read plee as equivalent to the modern "plea" risk misreading the procedural posture of a historical document. Additionally, plee should not be confused with the distinct procedural categories it sometimes labels: plees realx (real actions) and plees personals (personal actions) are classificatory terms, not individual pleadings.
Why It Matters in Research
Plee is encountered almost exclusively in Law French texts and early English legal literature — Littleton's Tenures and Britton being the primary sources where it surfaces. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus on medieval or early modern English property law, feudal tenure, or the history of pleading will find this term embedded in quotation and commentary without translation. The term's dual meaning (suit vs. plea) requires context to resolve: when a source speaks of plees realx or plees personals, it is classifying types of actions, not types of pleadings. When a source references plee barre, it is pointing to a specific defensive pleading. Failing to distinguish these uses leads to mischaracterization of historical procedure. Because plee is a Law French form, it appears most densely in sources predating the gradual Anglicization of legal language through the seventeenth century; later sources will have replaced it with "plea" or "action" without signaling the shift. Researchers should treat plee as a marker of early sources and cross-check against treatises on the forms of action when interpreting procedural context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole source dictionary for this entry and provides the essential framework: plee as action or suit in the old sense, plee as plea in the modern sense, and two illustrative Law French phrases drawn directly from Britton and Littleton. Burrill's treatment is characteristically compressed but accurate — he flags both meanings without overstating the distinction, and his citation to Littleton section 464 (plees realx and plees personals) and section 492 (plee barre) anchors the term in authoritative primary sources. What Burrill does not address is the procedural significance of the real/personal action distinction that the term encodes, nor does he note the term's obsolescence in practice. Researchers should not expect to find plee in post-seventeenth-century sources except as a historical quotation or scholarly gloss.
Jurisdictional Note
Plee is an English legal term with no direct American legal usage. It appears in American legal dictionaries and treatises solely in the context of English legal history and the history of common law pleading. No American jurisdiction uses the term as operative legal vocabulary.