Definition
A writ of entry is a common law real action used to recover possession of freehold land from a person who holds it without right. The plaintiff — called the demandant — alleges that the defendant wrongfully entered or holds the land through a chain of dispossession traceable to the original wrongdoer. Unlike personal actions for damages, the writ of entry sought restoration of the land itself.
The writ operated through a formal pleading structure that tracked how many times the land had changed hands since the original wrong. This tracking produced the distinctive "degrees" framework described below.
Common Confusion
The writ of entry is frequently confused with the modern action to quiet title or ejectment. These are not the same. Ejectment, which eventually displaced the writ of entry in practice, was a personal action grounded in a fictional lease and ouster — procedurally far more flexible than the rigid real action framework of the writ of entry. Quiet title is a modern equitable or statutory proceeding with no formal analog in the writ of entry's structure. Researchers encountering "writ of entry" in historical sources should resist reading modern land-recovery concepts backward into the term.
Core Elements
The writ of entry had three recognized degrees, determined by how many conveyances separated the defendant from the original disseisor:
IN THE PER: The defendant obtained possession directly through the original disseisor — either as alienee or heir. The writ alleged that the defendant "entered through" (per) the wrongdoer. This was the first degree.
IN THE PER AND CUI: The land passed through a second pair of hands. The writ alleged the defendant entered through one who himself entered through the original disseisor. This was the second degree.
IN THE POST: Beyond two degrees of removal, the common law courts could not track the chain precisely. The writ then alleged simply that the defendant holds the land wrongfully, without specifying the lineage of dispossession. This was the third degree, sometimes called the writ of entry in the post, and was the broadest form.
The distinction among degrees was not merely procedural formality — it determined which writ would lie and, in some periods, limited who could bring the action.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
The writ of entry encompassed several named variants tied to specific circumstances of wrongful entry or dispossession, including writs addressing disseisin, intrusion, discontinuance, and alienation by a tenant for life or in dower. These subtypes reflected the common law's granular attention to the precise mode of entry rather than a single generalized recovery mechanism.
Why It Matters in Research
The writ of entry is almost entirely obsolete as a living procedural vehicle, having been effectively replaced first by the action of ejectment and then by modern statutory land-recovery actions. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in historical sources — colonial American land records, English common law treatises, and early American court reports from the seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries.
Several navigational points matter:
The degrees framework (per, per and cui, post) appears inconsistently labeled across historical sources. Burrill and Bouvier both cross-reference rather than define, directing the reader elsewhere — a signal that by their compilation dates the term was treated as settled background knowledge, not a live issue. Black's (both editions) preserves the fullest usable historical definitions.
Colonial American jurisdictions adapted the writ unevenly. New England jurisdictions, particularly Massachusetts, used writs of entry more persistently than mid-Atlantic or Southern colonies, and Massachusetts retained a statutory descendant — the writ of entry under its real property statutes — well into the nineteenth century. Researchers working in early Massachusetts land litigation will find the writ of entry operative in ways it simply was not elsewhere.
The shift from real actions to ejectment is a critical transition point for corpus research. When ejectment cases begin appearing in a jurisdiction's reporters with frequency, the writ of entry has typically receded. Understanding this transition helps date the relevant window for writ-of-entry sources.
Do not conflate the writ of entry with habeas corpus or other prerogative writs. These share the word "writ" but belong to entirely different legal genealogies.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence offer substantively identical definitions, all organized around the per / per and cui / post degree structure. This agreement across three major dictionaries confirms the framework was well-settled in American legal usage by the mid-to-late nineteenth century.
Bouvier's and Burrill's both redirect without independent definition — Bouvier's to "Entry, Writ" and Burrill's to "Entry, writ of." This cross-referencing practice reflects the organizational conventions of each dictionary rather than any ambiguity about the term's meaning, but it does mean researchers using Bouvier's or Burrill's as primary sources will need to navigate the entry structure carefully to reach the substantive content.
None of the five source dictionaries address the Massachusetts statutory survival of the writ or the colonial variation in adoption. Researchers relying solely on these dictionary sources will have an accurate description of the English common law model but an incomplete picture of American jurisdictional practice.
Jurisdictional Note
The writ of entry had its fullest American persistence in Massachusetts, where a statutory real action descended from the common law form survived in the Massachusetts General Statutes through much of the nineteenth century. In most other American jurisdictions, the writ was either never firmly established or was abolished by the procedural reforms that merged law and equity in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia, Coram Nobis and Other Extraordinary Writs (criminal_240) — for context on the broader taxonomy of common law writs and how extraordinary writs differ from real actions like the writ of entry.