Catalogue description Court of Common Pleas: Declarations and Consent Rules in Ejectment

Declarations in ejectment were drawn up by the claimant, often on printed forms with the particular details filled in, and with affidavits of service, swearing that the tenants or their wives had been served with copies of the declaration and had had it read over to them where possible, annexed. The affidavits were sworn either before a judge in London or a commissioner for oaths in the country, and rules were developed as to what they should contain. Each declaration was at the suit of a nominal, fictitious, plaintiff, latterly normally John Doe, against a nominal, fictitious, defendant, often Richard Roe, called the 'casual ejector', and stated that the premises, whose location had to be clearly given, had been leased to Doe by the real plaintiff bringing the action, Doe then having been ejected by Roe.

The declaration served in place of a writ, and at its foot it included a notice to the actual possessor (or possessors) of the property from Roe, requiring him (or them) to appear in court at a stated date in the following term to be made the defendant instead of him. Elaborate rules developed as to what constituted a valid serving of the declaration to the real defendant. If he did appear in court he had to agree to a 'consent rule', which obliged him to accept the fictions and enter a plea of not guilty, upon which an entry was made in the appearance book. If he failed to appear, judgment was entered against him by default. The affidavits and copy declarations served the purpose of briefs to counsel to move for judgment. In the earlier of the surviving declarations John Doe and Richard Roe appear more often as pledges for prosecution than as plaintiff and defendant, and there are other fictional litigants like Thomas Notitle and John Goodright, but later Doe and Roe invariably appear in those roles.