Definition
A reserve fund set aside to cover losses, repairs, or unforeseen expenditures. The term appears primarily in the historical accounting practice of the Inner Temple, one of the Inns of Court in London, where a balance noted as "in emendals" at the foot of an account indicated funds held in reserve by the house for emergencies and contingencies. The term derives from the Latin emenda, meaning a payment made in amends or compensation.
Common Confusion
EMENDALS should not be confused with EMENDATIO (or EMENDARE), which in Saxon and early English law referred to the act of making amends for a crime—essentially a compensatory payment exacted from an offender. The shared Latin root (emenda) accounts for the surface resemblance, but the legal functions are entirely different. Emendals is a reserve fund held by an institution; emendatio is a payment made by an individual in satisfaction of a wrong. Rapalje & Lawrence places both terms in close proximity, which increases the risk of conflation for researchers scanning historical dictionaries.
Why It Matters in Research
EMENDALS is a term of narrow institutional and historical application. Researchers are unlikely to encounter it outside of historical sources touching on the governance and internal accounts of the English Inns of Court, particularly the Inner Temple. Its primary research value is definitional: if the term appears in a historical document—an account book, a parliamentary record concerning the Inns, or an early English legal dictionary—it should be read as a reserved fund, not as a fine, penalty, or general balance.
The term illustrates the degree to which medieval and early modern legal institutions maintained specialized accounting vocabulary that never entered general legal usage. It will not appear in American legal sources in any functional sense. Researchers working in the history of legal education, the Inns of Court, or English institutional finance before the nineteenth century are the most likely to need this entry.
One navigational caution: the root word emenda and its relatives (emendare, emendatio) do appear more broadly in medieval and early English law, carrying meanings related to amends, fines, and compensation for wrongs. Rapalje & Lawrence explicitly notes this connection, observing that emendare in Saxon law meant to make amends for a crime or trespass. Researchers encountering emendals should not conflate it with these related but distinct terms; emendals refers specifically to a reserve fund, not to a payment of amends in a criminal or tortious context.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries are in close agreement, which is itself informative: this is a term that historical lexicographers treated as settled, obscure, and essentially antiquarian even at the time of their writing. All five trace the term to its use in Inner Temple accounts. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence cite Spelman's Glossary as authority. Bouvier cites Cunningham's Law Dictionary and Cowell, noting that Spelman characterizes it as a contribution toward reparation of losses—a slight nuance from Cunningham's framing of it as funds held for "supply of emergencies." Burrill cites Cowell directly.
The minor divergence between sources is worth noting: Cunningham/Bouvier emphasizes the reserve-for-emergencies function, while Spelman/Black's emphasizes the reparation-of-losses function. In practice these are complementary rather than conflicting readings—a contingency reserve by definition covers both. No source offers a precise date of origin or last recorded use, and none suggests the term was ever adopted beyond the Inner Temple context. The historical dictionaries treat it uniformly as a survival piece: old enough to be gloss-worthy, narrow enough to require no extended analysis.