Definition
An archaic legal term with two historically distinct uses:
1. In early English common law: An inquisition or inquiry conducted by a jury; used interchangeably with "inquest" to mean both the jury itself and the proceeding in which the jury examined a matter.
2. In canon law: A formal examination of witnesses, reduced to writing, conducted by or before an authorized ecclesiastical judge for the purpose of gathering testimony to be used at trial — roughly analogous to a deposition proceeding in civil practice.
The term fell out of active legal use in English as "inquest" became the dominant spelling and "examination" or "deposition" displaced the canon law sense.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete form of inquest.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as a distinct entry; subsumed under "inquest."
The gap here is not between common and legal meaning but between two distinct legal contexts — common law and canon law — that the same word once served. A researcher encountering "enquest" in a historical document must determine which tradition the source belongs to before interpreting the term, since the common law sense points to a jury proceeding and the canon law sense points to a witness-examination procedure.
Common Confusion
Enquest and inquest are, for most practical purposes, the same word at different moments in spelling history. Researchers sometimes assume enquest signals a technically distinct proceeding from inquest — it does not in the common law tradition. The confusion is more significant in canon law sources, where "enquest" describes something closer to a modern evidentiary deposition than to a coroner's inquest or grand jury inquiry. Do not project the modern coroner's-inquest meaning backward onto canon law uses of the term.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a research artifact — you will encounter it in historical sources, not in modern legal documents. Three traps deserve attention:
First, spelling instability. Medieval and early modern legal manuscripts show considerable variation: enquest, enqueste, inquest, inquisition, and enquiry could all appear in close proximity, sometimes referring to the same proceeding, sometimes to different stages of it. Do not assume variant spellings signal distinct legal concepts without examining context.
Second, the common law versus canon law divide. Burrill's entries point to Year Books and Littleton — firmly common law territory. Black's supplemental entry points to canon law procedure. A researcher working in ecclesiastical court records (church courts, probate under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, matrimonial causes before the secular courts absorbed them) will encounter enquest in the deposition/witness-examination sense. A researcher working in common law plea rolls or early English statutes will encounter it in the jury/inquisition sense. The source genre usually resolves the ambiguity.
Third, Cowell's usage. Burrill notes that Cowell (The Interpreter, 1607) used "enquest" as the English form of "inquest." Cowell is a significant source for Law Mind corpus researchers working in early modern legal terminology, and his usage should be treated as authoritative for that period rather than as an error or archaism.
Year Book references (such as Michaelmas, 3 Edward II) and Littleton's Tenures (section 368) are the primary anchors for the common law jury sense. Researchers tracing jury procedure in medieval sources should treat enquest as a synonym for inquest throughout that literature.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill and Black's supplemental entry agree that enquest is an archaic variant of inquest but diverge in emphasis. Burrill emphasizes the common law lineage — jury, inquisition, early plea roll usage — and treats the term historically, citing Year Books and Littleton. Black's supplemental entry focuses exclusively on the canon law sense (written examination of witnesses before an authorized judge) without cross-referencing the common law jury meaning at all.
Neither source addresses the procedural mechanics of the canon law enquest in depth, and neither situates the term within the broader history of ecclesiastical court procedure. Researchers needing more than a definitional anchor should consult secondary works on English ecclesiastical court procedure for fuller treatment of how witness examination (the enquest in its canon law form) functioned in practice.
What historical dictionaries collectively miss: the canon law enquest has a continental European analogue in the enquête procedure of French and Roman canon law courts, which was a formal, written, inquisitorial mode of proof-gathering. The English ecclesiastical courts borrowed and adapted this procedure. Neither Burrill nor Black's makes this connection explicit, which matters for researchers working comparatively across civil law and common law ecclesiastical sources.
Jurisdictional Note
The common law jury sense of enquest developed within English common law and traveled with it to American colonial practice, though the term itself had largely disappeared from active use by the time American legal institutions consolidated. The canon law sense was operative in English ecclesiastical courts until their jurisdiction was substantially reorganized and transferred in the nineteenth century. Researchers working in Scottish, Irish, or continental ecclesiastical records may encounter cognate terms (enquête, inquisitio) with related but not identical procedural meanings.