Definition
Plegii de retorno habendo (Latin: "pledges for having a return") refers to the sureties or pledges given by a plaintiff in replevin to guarantee that, if the plaintiff's claim fails and a judgment of return is entered, the distrained goods or chattel will be returned to the defendant. In an action of replevin, the plaintiff obtains possession of goods allegedly wrongfully taken or distrained before the case is decided. The plegii de retorno habendo are the pledges — typically persons standing as sureties — who secure the plaintiff's obligation to restore those goods should the court ultimately find against the plaintiff.
The concept operates as a condition precedent or security mechanism within the replevin action: the plaintiff may have the goods, but only upon furnishing these pledges as a guarantee of return.
---
Common Confusion
The term is sometimes loosely grouped with general pledge or pawn concepts, but it has no connection to the law of pledge as security for debt (pignus). It is specifically and exclusively a procedural device within replevin. Researchers encountering "pledge" language in historical replevin contexts should distinguish between plegii de retorno habendo (sureties for return of distrained goods) and the substantive law of pledge or pawn (collateral security for a loan obligation).
---
Why It Matters in Research
This is an archaic procedural term that appears almost exclusively in historical common law sources dealing with the action of replevin and distress. Researchers should be alert to several navigational points:
First, the term belongs to the procedural vocabulary of replevin as it existed at common law. Modern replevin statutes have abolished or transformed the surety requirement in most American jurisdictions, replacing it with bond or undertaking requirements. An entry or pleading referencing plegii de retorno habendo almost certainly originates before the nineteenth-century procedural reforms or in courts still closely following common law forms.
Second, the term connects directly to the writ of retorno habendo — the writ issued to enforce return of goods when the plaintiff in replevin failed or the defendant prevailed. The plegii are the mechanism that makes that writ effective by ensuring someone of substance stands behind the obligation to return.
Third, in historical records — particularly English common law pleading books, early American practice manuals, and colonial court records — the phrase appears in the body of replevin writs and replevin bonds. Researchers working with those materials need to recognize it as a term of art designating the sureties named in the writ, not a general reference to pledges or collateral.
Fourth, because replevin was heavily used in disputes over distrained goods (landlord-tenant, feudal service, and agricultural contexts), this term will surface in a wide range of property and agrarian law records. The connection to distress is essential: the goods at issue were seized by distress, not merely taken, and that procedural posture is what triggers the need for return pledges.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary defines the term compactly as "Pledges to return the subject of distress, should the right be determined against the" plaintiff — with the entry apparently truncated in the available text, but the essential meaning is complete. Rapalje and Lawrence track the same formulation closely, adding the citation to Stephens' Commentaries (3 Steph. Com. (7th ed.) 422 n.), which provides the doctrinal grounding in English practice.
Both sources are in agreement on the core meaning: these are pledges given to secure return of distrained goods in replevin. Neither source ventures into the procedural mechanics of how pledges were named, what happened upon forfeiture, or how American courts adapted the requirement — gaps that are meaningful for researchers working with American materials. The historical dictionaries treat the term as self-explanatory to a trained common lawyer of the period, which it may have been, but they offer little guidance on its practical operation.
Neither Black's nor Rapalje and Lawrence distinguishes this term from the related writ of retorno habendo itself, or from avowry and cognizance practice, which are the defendant's counterpart mechanisms in replevin. Researchers should consult treatises on common law pleading for fuller procedural context.
---
Jurisdictional Note
The term is rooted in English common law procedure and was carried into American practice through the colonial and early republic periods. American procedural reform — particularly the Field Code reforms beginning in the 1840s and the subsequent spread of code pleading — displaced the common law replevin forms in most states. Modern American replevin or claim-and-delivery statutes use bond and undertaking language rather than pledge or surety language derived from this tradition. The term retains historical relevance in English legal history and in jurisdictions that preserved common law forms longer than others.
---