Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "ink." Appearing in medieval English legal usage, *enke* referred to the physical substance used in writing—specifically as the subject of evidentiary scrutiny in documents. The term appears in the context of examining written instruments for signs of forgery or alteration, where differences in hand or ink could indicate a document had been tampered with or was not what it purported to be.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A surname only; the word has no surviving common English meaning as a noun.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as an entry; the modern English word "ink" had fully displaced any Norman French form by that period.
Editorial note: The gap here is one of displacement rather than divergence. The legal term *enke* and the modern English word "ink" are essentially the same word, but researchers encountering *enke* in medieval legal manuscripts may not immediately recognize it. The Law French form simply preserves an older orthographic convention.
Common Confusion
*Enke* is sometimes passed over as an unrecognized word by researchers unfamiliar with Law French orthography. It is not a technical legal concept distinct from the ordinary substance; its legal significance lies entirely in its context—the examination of documentary evidence for fraud or alteration. Confusion also arises from the variant spellings common to Law French sources, where the same term may appear as *enke*, *encre*, or be rendered into Latin as *incaustum* in the same or related texts.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval and early common law sources—particularly plea rolls, Year Books, and treatises from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—will encounter *enke* in passages dealing with the authenticity of written instruments. Britton's *Britton* (c. 28) is the primary locus for this usage, and the term appears there in the phrase *diversite de mayn, ou de enke en l'escripture* ("difference of hand or of ink in the writing"), which describes one basis for challenging a document's validity.
The practical research trap is two-fold. First, a researcher unfamiliar with Law French may not recognize the term at all, or may search for it under modern English spelling conventions and miss it entirely. Second, the conceptual significance—that ink variation was legally cognizable evidence of fraud or interpolation—is easy to underestimate. Medieval courts and treatise writers treated consistency of ink and hand as material to document authenticity, a precursor to what modern evidence law addresses through chain of custody and forensic document examination.
Burrill cross-references *incaustum* and the letter entry for *E*, suggesting that researchers should trace this concept through the Latin as well as the French forms when working across different manuscript traditions or when moving between Law French and Latin legal texts of the same period.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry in the Law Mind shelf for this term. Burrill correctly identifies *enke* as Law French for "ink," gives the relevant passage from Britton, and notes that the modern English word "ink" derives its initial letter from the Latin *incaustum* rather than directly following the French form (which would suggest an *e-* beginning). This is a useful philological observation but has no independent legal significance.
No other shelf dictionaries—Bouvier, Black, or the civil law lexicons—carry this term, which reflects its narrow currency: *enke* is a trace element of Law French documentary practice, not a term that persisted into the developed common law vocabulary. Researchers should not expect to find substantive doctrinal elaboration on this term in any standard legal dictionary; Burrill's treatment is essentially complete as a dictionary entry.
Jurisdictional Note
The term belongs exclusively to the medieval English common law tradition and has no jurisdictional relevance to modern legal systems. It appears in sources applicable to England only, and primarily in the context of documentary evidence rules as understood before the formalization of the law of evidence.