Definition
An archaic spelling variant of INCURRED. The term appears in older English legal texts and records as an alternate orthographic form meaning to have brought upon oneself a liability, penalty, forfeiture, or obligation — the same substantive meaning carried by the modern spelling "incurred." The variant spelling reflects the orthographic instability common in early modern English legal writing, where the prefix in- was sometimes rendered as en-.
Common Confusion
ENCURRED vs. INCURRED: These are not distinct legal concepts. ENCURRED is simply an obsolete spelling of INCURRED. A researcher encountering ENCURRED in a historical source should treat it as equivalent in meaning to incurred — that is, a liability, debt, penalty, or obligation that has been brought into existence or come to rest upon a party through some act, omission, or event. No legal distinction between the two spellings has ever been recognized; the variation is purely orthographic.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English law reports, plea rolls, or other pre-eighteenth-century legal materials may encounter ENCURRED and misread it as a term of art distinct from INCURRED, or may fail to locate relevant passages when searching for one spelling but not the other. Full-text searches of digitized historical corpora — including year books, early nominate reports, and chancery records — should account for both spellings. The Burrill citation to 1 Leon. 13 (Leonard's Reports, a late sixteenth-century English law report) illustrates the period during which this variant spelling was in active use. By the time of systematic legal dictionary compilation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the spelling had standardized to INCURRED, and ENCURRED effectively disappeared from legal writing. No independent doctrinal content attaches to the variant form.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the only historical shelf source to give the term its own entry, and Burrill himself treats it as nothing more than an old spelling variant, directing the reader immediately to INCURRED. His single citation — 1 Leon. 13 — anchors the term to the Elizabethan-era nominate reports, consistent with the period of greatest orthographic instability in English legal writing. No other major historical legal dictionary (Bouvier, Black, Tomlin, Jacob) carries an independent entry for ENCURRED, which itself confirms that the variant spelling had no recognized independent legal meaning even in earlier periods. Burrill's treatment is authoritative in its minimalism: the entry exists solely as a finding aid for researchers confronting the archaic spelling in primary sources.