Definition
Unques prist (Law French: "always ready") is a plea in which a defendant asserts that they have always been ready and willing to perform the obligation at issue — whether to pay a debt, render a duty, or fulfill a contractual or legal demand — and that the plaintiff therefore has no actionable grievance. The plea operates as a denial of breach, not a justification for it: the defendant does not dispute the obligation but contests that any default ever occurred on their part.
The term is an alternative form of the more commonly encountered tout temps prist, and the two expressions are functionally and legally identical. Both assert continuous readiness to perform, placing the narrative fault on the opposing party for failing to make a proper demand or tender.
Common Confusion
UNQUES PRIST vs. TOUT TEMPS PRIST: These are the same plea in substance, differing only in phrasing within Law French. Researchers encountering one form in a primary source should cross-reference the other, as historical pleading records and abridgments are inconsistent in which form they employ. Neither is more authoritative than the other; the choice was stylistic or regional. Do not treat them as distinct pleas with distinct legal effects.
UNQUES PRIST vs. TENDER: Unques prist is a pleading posture — a formal assertion of readiness — while tender is an affirmative act of offering performance. A defendant pleading unques prist claims they were always ready; a defendant who has made a formal tender has taken a concrete step that may have additional procedural consequences, such as stopping the accrual of interest or costs.
Why It Matters in Research
This is an archival and pleading-history term with no modern procedural counterpart. Researchers will encounter it exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English common law materials — year books, plea rolls, abridgments, and early chancery records — and in American legal sources that reproduce or quote that tradition directly.
The principal research trap is failure to recognize unques prist and tout temps prist as synonyms. An index or abridgment may carry treatment under one form and not the other, and a researcher who looks only for tout temps prist may miss relevant discussion filed under unques prist, or vice versa. Cowell's Interpreter is the shared citation point for both forms across all three dictionary sources, making it the natural starting point for deeper historical inquiry.
The plea belongs to the formal common law system of special pleading, which was substantially dismantled in England by the Hilary Rules of 1834 and by subsequent procedural reforms, and in American jurisdictions by the Field Code (1848) and its successors. Any modern pleading system built on notice or fact pleading has no functional equivalent. Researchers using this term to understand historical litigation should situate it within the general structure of affirmative pleas and the law of tender and offer of performance.
There is no significant jurisdictional variation to track for this term — its obsolescence is uniform across common law systems.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary give identical treatment: the Law French gloss ("always ready"), attribution to Cowell, and cross-reference to tout temps prist. The entries are minimal and referential by design, pointing researchers outward rather than supplying substantive doctrine. This unanimity reflects the term's status as a known quantity in the historical pleading tradition requiring no elaboration — its meaning was fixed, its use was formal, and by the time these dictionaries were compiled the plea itself was already a relic.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply is any doctrinal account of when the plea succeeded or failed, what counter-pleading it invited, or how it interacted with the rules of tender. For that substance, researchers must go beyond these entries to treatises on common law pleading — Gould's Treatise on the Principles of Pleading (1832) and Stephen's Principles of Pleading (various editions) address the plea of always ready in the context of the general structure of issue-formation, though not always under this specific Law French label.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Tout Temps Prist; Common Law Pleading; Tender and Offer of Performance.