Definition
A writ of summons used in old English common law practice, directing that a party be summoned to appear in court. The term is Law Latin, derived from the second-person singular imperative "you summon," and it functioned as the operative word in a class of original writs — particularly writs of praecipe quod reddat — commanding the sheriff to cause a named party to appear before the court at a specified time. The writ was not a single standardized instrument but a family of judicial writs, varying in form and purpose depending on the type of proceeding in which it was employed.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Summoneas ad auxiliandum: A writ summoning a person to come in aid of a party to an action; issued in connection with the procedure of prayer in aid.
Summoneas ad warrantizandum: A writ summoning a person to appear as a warrantor — typically a grantor called upon to defend a title claim on behalf of the grantee being sued in a real action.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter this term almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English common law sources, particularly in materials touching real property actions and feudal procedural forms. Three points are worth keeping in mind.
First, the term is not a synonym for modern summons. A modern summons is a notice-and-process document served on a defendant to initiate civil litigation. The summoneas was a writ directed to the sheriff, ordering the sheriff to bring a party before the court — a structural and procedural distinction that matters when reading old pleading records or treatise discussions of real actions.
Second, the writ's diversity of forms means that encountering "summoneas" in a historical source without qualification does not tell you which version is meant. The subtypes — ad auxiliandum, ad warrantizandum, and others catalogued in Burrill — each arose in distinct procedural contexts, and confusing them will distort the analysis of whatever real action or land dispute is under examination.
Third, the maxim cited in Rapalje — Summonitiones aut citationes nullae liceant fieri intra palatium regis ("Let no summonses or citations be served within the king's palace") — appears in Coke's Institutes and reflects the privilege of the royal household from service of process. This principle has relevance for any research into the historical scope of process immunity or sovereign privilege, and the summoneas writ sits squarely in that doctrinal neighborhood.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries present a consistent but thin account. Black's (both editions), Bouvier, and Burrill agree on the core definition: a Law Latin writ directing summons of a party to appear. Burrill goes furthest, identifying the writ's role as the emphatic operative word in original writs and cataloguing the principal subtypes with references to Roscoe's Real Actions. Rapalje adds procedural texture by noting the role of summoners as petty officers and citing Fleta, but his entry is brief and flags the term as obsolete without further development.
None of the historical dictionaries situate the summoneas within the broader framework of the real actions in which it predominantly appeared, and none trace its displacement by statutory process reform. Researchers needing a fuller procedural account will find Roscoe's Real Actions (cited by Burrill) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium more useful than any of the dictionary entries alone.
The agreement across sources on obsolescence is notable: by the time these dictionaries were compiled, the summoneas had been swept away by procedural reforms in England (the Common Law Procedure Acts) and was already a historical artifact in American jurisdictions, which had either never adopted the real actions machinery or had abandoned it early.
Jurisdictional Note
The summoneas was an English common law writ and has no surviving procedural role in any American jurisdiction. It appears in American legal materials only when courts or treatise writers are discussing the historical background of real property actions or process law inherited from the English system.