Definition
A Law Latin term appearing in old English and early American land records. INCLAUSA denotes a home close — that is, an enclosure or parcel of ground situated near or immediately surrounding a dwelling house. The term identifies land set apart from open or common fields by being fenced, hedged, or otherwise physically bounded in close proximity to the homestead.
The concept is narrower than a general enclosure (close) in that the "home" qualifier signals both the land's physical proximity to the dwelling and its domestic character — typically used for kitchen gardens, outbuildings, small pastures, or other productive purposes directly incident to household occupation.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The term is not in general modern use.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The term had passed out of common English usage before the nineteenth century.
The absence from both common dictionaries confirms that INCLAUSA is pure Law Latin technical vocabulary. Researchers encountering it in historical deeds or records should treat it as a term of art and resist any inference from its resemblance to the English word "enclosed" standing alone. The home-close sense is specific and cannot be reconstructed from the component words without reference to the legal dictionary tradition.
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Why It Matters in Research
INCLAUSA surfaces almost exclusively in transcribed medieval and early modern English records, colonial American land grants, and antiquarian legal texts. Its practical importance for corpus researchers lies in a handful of areas.
First, boundary disputes and deed interpretation. When INCLAUSA appears in a conveyance, it signals that the parcel described is a home close — a category with recognized legal attributes distinct from open-field strips, common pasture, or woodland. Misreading the term as a general synonym for any enclosed ground can distort acreage calculations and misidentify the character of land conveyed.
Second, the Rapalje & Lawrence entry links INCLAUSA to a cluster of related interpretive problems under the heading INCLOSE, INCLUDE — citing Alabama and English authority — and separately to the question of what constitutes INCLOSED GROUND within the meaning of 5 Geo. III ch. 14. Researchers tracing the statutory meaning of enclosed ground in early American cases influenced by English enclosure law should follow those cross-references. The proximity of INCLAUSA in the Rapalje entry to those statutory questions suggests courts sometimes analogized from the Latin term's meaning when construing English enclosure statutes.
Third, the Black's 1st edition entry introduces a significant anomaly: it conflates INCLAUSA with the maxim INCLUSIO UNIUS EST EXCLUSIO ALTERIUS in a single run-on passage. The maxim is a wholly separate concept. Researchers using early editions of Black's should be alert to this compression; the maxim receives its own treatment elsewhere and should not be understood as a gloss on INCLAUSA itself.
Fourth, citation care is essential. The sources cite Cowell's Interpreter and Parochiale Antiquum (abbreviated Paroch. Antiq.) as primary authorities. Neither is a case reporter. Cowell's Interpreter is a seventeenth-century legal glossary; Parochiale Antiquum is an antiquarian work on English parishes. These are philological and historical sources, not binding authority. Their appearance in law dictionary entries signals that INCLAUSA is a record term being glossed, not a doctrinal concept being defined.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The four historical dictionaries are in substantial agreement on the core definition: INCLAUSA means a home close or enclosure near the house, sourced to Cowell and Parochiale Antiquum. No source disputes this.
The dictionaries diverge in emphasis and scope. Black's 2nd edition gives the cleanest, most restrained entry — a single sentence without extraneous matter. Burrill's entry is the most scholarly, providing the Latin Latinate context ("in old records") and cross-referencing INCIDERE, a separate entry that appears to have been partially run together in the printed text due to typographical proximity; researchers should treat the INCIDERE material in Burrill as a distinct entry that begins mid-paragraph. Rapalje & Lawrence is the most practically oriented, gesturing toward deed-drafting usage and statutory interpretation questions that the purely historical dictionaries do not address.
Black's 1st edition is the least reliable on this entry. The passage conflates INCLAUSA, a Vermont acreage case cite (39 Vt. 34, 326), a Wisconsin cite (36 Wis. 42), a cross-reference to CLOSE, and then the unrelated maxim Inclusio unius est exclusio alterius — apparently the result of compression or compositor error. The Vermont and Wisconsin citations concern enclosure law generally and do not appear to be authorities on the Latin term INCLAUSA specifically. Researchers should treat the Black's 1st edition entry with caution and prefer the 2nd edition or Burrill on this point.
All sources are consistent in treating INCLAUSA as a historical term, not a living term of art in nineteenth- or twentieth-century practice.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term appears in English sources and in early American colonial and post-colonial land records that drew on English conveyancing practice. It has no recognized technical meaning in modern statutory law in any U.S. jurisdiction. Where it appears in an American deed, its meaning should be resolved by reference to the English common-law tradition from which the conveyance drew.
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