Definition
A "swer in equity" (properly "answer in equity") was a procedural device in the English Court of Chancery by which a defendant who resided at a distance from London could submit his sworn answer to a bill of complaint without personally attending court. Because Chancery practice required defendants to answer under oath, and because travel to London was burdensome or impractical, the court could issue a commission to local officers who would administer the oath to the defendant in his home county, seal the written answer, and arrange for its transport and delivery to the court in London.
The term as it appears in older legal dictionaries is almost certainly a contracted or corrupted form of "answers in equity" — referring specifically to the sworn, written responses defendants filed in equity proceedings, as distinct from pleadings at common law.
---
Common Confusion
This entry should not be confused with the general pleading concept of an "answer" in modern civil procedure. The equity answer was a substantive sworn statement — closer to a deposition or interrogatory response than to a modern Rule 12 answer — because Chancery practice treated the defendant's answer as evidence. The bill-and-answer procedure of equity was entirely separate from common-law pleading, and the two systems operated under different rules, terminology, and courts until the merger of law and equity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-merger equity materials — particularly English Chancery records, early American equity courts, and colonial-era court documents — will encounter sworn answers filed by out-of-town defendants under commissions of this type. Several research traps are worth noting.
First, the commission procedure was a recognized workaround for a structural requirement of equity practice: personal oath-taking before the court. Understanding this procedure helps researchers interpret chains of custody notations, messenger oaths, and commissioner certifications that appear in the record alongside the defendant's answer itself.
Second, the Rapalje & Lawrence entry is truncated — it breaks off mid-sentence — which means the full procedural details (including what happened if the seal was broken, what the messenger's oath covered, and what formal defects could invalidate the answer) must be sought in other sources, including Story's Equity Pleading or Mitford's Treatise on the Pleadings in Suits in the Court of Chancery.
Third, jurisdictional adaptation matters here. American equity courts, particularly in the colonial and early republic periods, adapted English Chancery practice inconsistently. Some states recognized commissioner-taken answers; others required different procedures for distant defendants. Researchers examining early American equity records should not assume that English Chancery rules applied in full.
Fourth, the merger of law and equity — accomplished federally by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938, and at varying dates in the states — rendered this procedure obsolete. Any document referencing sworn equity answers taken by commission will almost certainly predate that merger, which provides a useful terminus ante quem for dating undated materials.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry, though fragmentary as reproduced here, confirms the basic contours of the procedure: a defendant living more than twenty miles from London could obtain a commission; commissioners administered the oath; the sealed answer was then carried or sent to court by a messenger who himself swore to the integrity of the sealed document. The twenty-mile rule reflects the practical realities of early modern travel and Chancery's physical location in London.
The entry illustrates a broader feature of equity practice that historical dictionaries capture unevenly: the procedural scaffolding of the Court of Chancery was elaborate and largely customary, developed over centuries without systematic codification. Rapalje & Lawrence captures the outline but not the nuances. Older and more specialized authorities — Mitford, Story, and the Chancery practice manuals of the eighteenth century — provide fuller treatment. Modern legal dictionaries largely omit the term because the underlying practice is extinct.
---
Jurisdictional Note
This procedure was specifically a creature of English Chancery practice and was adopted in varying forms by American equity courts before the merger of law and equity. It has no operational significance in modern federal or state civil procedure, where the distinction between law and equity courts no longer governs the form of defendant responses.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Remedies at Law vs. Remedies in Equity — The Adequacy Test and the Merger of Law and Equity (The Law Mind Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia)
---