Definition
A Latin term meaning "we make known." In historical English legal practice, ennotescimus referred to a species of exemplification — a formal, authenticated copy — of charters of feoffment or other private instruments not of record. The term derives from the emphatic closing word of the Latin formula used in letters patent of this kind. Unlike exemplifications of instruments of record, which drew their authority from the official custody of a court or registry, an ennotescimus operated to authenticate private documents that existed outside any official record system.
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Common Confusion
Ennotescimus is sometimes loosely grouped with exemplification generally, but the distinction is material: standard exemplification attests to instruments of record held in official custody. Ennotescimus specifically served instruments not of record — private charters, feoffments, and similar conveyances — giving them a form of authenticated public recognition they would not otherwise possess. A researcher encountering either term in historical sources should not assume they are interchangeable.
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Why It Matters in Research
Ennotescimus is a term almost entirely confined to medieval and early modern English legal practice and will appear, if at all, only in the oldest strata of the Law Mind corpus — Year Books, early Chancery records, and pre-modern treatises on conveyancing and land title. Researchers working with feoffment chains or title histories in pre-Statute of Uses (1535) materials may encounter the concept even without the explicit Latin label.
The term's practical importance in historical research lies in understanding how private instruments lacking the evidentiary weight of enrolled records could be authenticated. A feoffment was a common mode of conveying freehold land, and it often existed only as a private deed. Ennotescimus provided a mechanism analogous to — but distinct from — enrollment or recordation, allowing such instruments to acquire a publicly recognized form.
Because the term dropped from active use well before the modern era, it does not appear in most post-18th-century legal literature. Researchers consulting secondary sources written after the decline of Latin pleading and conveyancing practice will find little assistance. Primary source navigation in Year Books and early Chancery rolls is the appropriate research path when this term surfaces.
The Coke reference (5 Coke, 54a) cited in Black's points to Sir Edward Coke's Reports, a foundational source for early modern English common law. Researchers should treat that citation as the primary analytical anchor for this term.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) is the sole historical dictionary source for this entry, and its treatment is appropriately brief: a one-sentence definition identifying the term as a species of exemplification applicable to instruments not of record, anchored by the Coke citation. No other major historical legal dictionary — not Bouvier, not Burrill, not Tomlin's Law Dictionary — is noted as carrying a separate entry for this term, which underscores its narrow and archaic character.
Black's correctly situates ennotescimus within the system of letters patent and Latin form-pleading. The derivation from the closing emphatic word of the Latin formula is consistent with the broader practice of naming legal instruments after their operative or characteristic words — a convention visible across medieval Latin instruments (compare *fieri facias*, *habeas corpus*, and similar writs named for their operative phrases).
What historical sources do not address is the procedural mechanics of how ennotescimus operated in practice relative to Chancery enrollment — a gap researchers will need to fill through primary sources and specialized scholarship on medieval conveyancing.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Exemplification; Feoffment; Letters Patent (Historical)
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