Definition
"The said E" is a term of art from historical legal drafting — specifically, a shorthand notation used in indictments and similar formal legal instruments to refer back to a previously named individual, where the initial "E" (or another letter) stood as a placeholder or abbreviation for a person's name already introduced in the document. The phrase functioned as an anaphoric reference: having named a party once in full, the drafter would thereafter refer to that person as "the said E" to confirm identity and avoid ambiguity, particularly in documents where multiple individuals appeared.
The phrase belongs to a family of similar drafting conventions documented in Rapalje & Lawrence, all of which addressed how shorthand or abbreviated references in legal instruments — wills, indictments, contracts — were to be construed. These include analogous entries for "the said property," "the two," and "the wooden building," each litigated as questions of whether such abbreviated references sufficiently identified the person or thing intended.
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Common Confusion
Modern readers may mistake "the said E" for a generic placeholder in a template or form document. It was not. In historical practice, the letter "E" represented an actual person's name — typically the first letter of a given name or surname — that appeared in full elsewhere in the instrument. The interpretive question before courts was whether such a reference was legally sufficient to identify the defendant or party, or whether it rendered the indictment or instrument fatally defective for want of certainty. Confusion also arises because the convention looks identical to a drafting error or an unfilled blank.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century indictments, wills, and pleadings will encounter this convention frequently. The interpretive question — whether "the said E" or a similarly abbreviated reference satisfied the legal requirement of sufficient identification — generated real litigation. Rapalje & Lawrence cites the English case at 9 Car. & P. 215 (in the indictment context) as authority on this point. Researchers should note:
1. Sufficiency of identification was tested differently in criminal indictments versus wills. In indictments, the standard was whether the defendant could be certain of the charge; in wills, the question was whether the bequest or devise could be given effect without resort to inadmissible extrinsic evidence.
2. The "said" construction is a marker of formal pleading style that largely disappeared from American practice after code pleading reforms beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. Its presence in a document is itself a dating indicator.
3. These abbreviated-reference cases cluster in the case law of the 1830s–1870s and are disproportionately found in English reports (Carrington & Payne) and early Pennsylvania and Massachusetts decisions — the jurisdictions most cited in this entry cluster within Rapalje & Lawrence.
4. Do not conflate the interpretive question with questions of identity in modern practice. Modern instruments use full names, and the interpretive gap these cases addressed has largely been closed by drafting convention and rule-based pleading requirements.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence treat "the said E" as a term requiring judicial construction, not merely a drafting convenience. The entry points directly to 9 Car. & P. 215, an English nisi prius report, as the governing authority for the indictment context. Rapalje & Lawrence's structure groups this entry with parallel questions of abbreviated or shorthand reference — "the said property," "the two," "the wooden building" — reflecting an editorial judgment that these were all instances of the same underlying interpretive problem: whether a compressed or abbreviated reference in a formal instrument is legally sufficient.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the doctrinal resolution: the question of whether abbreviation was cured by context (i.e., the earlier full recitation) or was independently fatal was answered case by case, and no uniform rule emerges from the dictionary entry alone. Researchers needing the substantive rule must go to the cited reports directly.
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Jurisdictional Note
The indictment usage derives primarily from English common law practice and was litigated in American courts under equivalent standards. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts decisions, cited in the surrounding entry cluster in Rapalje & Lawrence, applied similar construction principles in the will context. Modern American jurisdictions have largely superseded this convention through rules of civil and criminal procedure requiring full identification of parties.
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