Definition
To hold pleas is a term of historical legal art meaning to have cognizance or jurisdiction of actions — that is, to possess the lawful authority to hear causes, entertain suits, and exercise judicial power over matters brought before a court. A court or officer empowered to hold pleas was one formally authorized to sit in judgment and adjudicate disputes, as distinguished from a body or official lacking such jurisdiction. The phrase carried both a structural and a procedural meaning: structurally, it identified whether a tribunal had competence over a class of cases; procedurally, it described the act of convening or conducting such judicial proceedings.
The Latin equivalents — tenere placita and ad tenenda placita — appear in writs and grants conferring or acknowledging judicial authority, particularly in the context of franchise courts and inferior jurisdictions. A writ ad tenenda placita authorized a party (often a lord or borough) to hold court over specified matters. To exercise this power without such authorization was to usurp jurisdiction — a serious legal defect capable of vitiating the proceedings entirely.
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Common Confusion
Modern researchers should not conflate "to hold pleas" with the contemporary act of entering or taking a plea (as in a defendant pleading guilty or not guilty). These are entirely different concepts. "To hold pleas" describes jurisdictional competence — the court's power to hear — not the defendant's procedural response to a charge. The confusion is easy to make because "plea" in modern usage almost always refers to the defendant's answer, whereas the historical legal term "pleas" meant causes of action or suits cognizable before a court. The Court of Common Pleas, for example, was named for its authority to hold pleas of common (civil) matters, not for any activity of criminal defendants.
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Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is essentially extinct in modern legal usage but surfaces frequently in historical sources — writs, charters, franchise grants, Year Books, early treatises, and equity records from the medieval and early modern English periods. Researchers working in those materials must recognize "to hold pleas" as jurisdictional language, not procedural language.
Several traps await the unwary:
First, the phrase appears in grants of franchise jurisdiction. When a charter grants the right "to hold pleas of debt and trespass," it is conferring subject-matter jurisdiction on a private or municipal court. This is legally significant when tracing the boundaries of a franchise court's authority or establishing whether a particular action was properly cognizable.
Second, "to hold pleas" appears in writ forms — the Registrum Originale (Register of Writs) being the key source — and the specific formulation in a writ matters for identifying what class of jurisdiction was being exercised or challenged.
Third, the distinction between holding pleas of the Crown and holding common pleas was fundamental to English jurisdictional structure. Pleas of the Crown were serious criminal matters reserved to royal courts; common pleas were civil actions between subjects. A franchise court authorized only to hold common pleas had no business entertaining a plea of the Crown, and any proceeding in excess of that grant was void for want of jurisdiction.
Fourth, the phrase connects directly to the broader architecture of English court organization that persisted into the American colonial period. Researchers tracing the jurisdictional antecedents of early American courts will encounter this language in founding charters and court establishment documents.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary defines the phrase concisely and accurately: "to have cognizance or jurisdiction of actions" and "to hold courts, or hear causes," with citations to Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Com. 35, 298) and the Register of Writs (Reg. Orig. 68 b). The definition is sound and the citations are reliable anchors for further research.
Blackstone's treatment situates the phrase within his exposition of the superior courts and their jurisdictions, and the Register of Writs provides the documentary foundation for understanding how the authority to hold pleas was formally conveyed by writ. Burrill does not elaborate on the distinction between holding pleas of the Crown and common pleas, which is the most consequential distinction for researchers — that gap should be filled by consulting Blackstone directly and, for more granular treatment, Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law.
No significant divergence exists among the major historical dictionaries on this term; the meaning was stable and technical.
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Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is specific to English legal history and the American jurisdictions that inherited English common law forms through colonial charters and early state constitutions. It has no operative significance in modern American or English law, though it may appear in historical documents relevant to the jurisdictional history of specific courts or territories.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Arraignment and Entry of Plea — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia (for orientation on the modern meaning of "plea" and why it differs from the historical concept embedded in this term)
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