Definition
An inhog is an enclosed and cultivated parcel cut from a common or fallow field — a nook or corner of open agricultural land that has been fenced off and brought under private cultivation. The term belongs to the vocabulary of English agrarian land use and appears primarily in old manorial records and parish documents. It describes the act or result of enclosing a small, irregular portion of common land for private agricultural purposes, typically at the margin of a larger open field system.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering inhog in historical land records should treat it as a signal that the document concerns the enclosure of common or waste land, likely at the parish or manor level. The term points toward the broader legal and social history of enclosure in England — a process that unfolded across several centuries and generated substantial legal dispute over rights of common, trespass, and land tenure.
Because inhog appears almost exclusively in old records — parish antiquities, manorial surveys, and similar documents — it will rarely surface in formal court reports. Researchers working with English local records, copyhold documents, or open-field surveys should flag the term as a marker of encroachment or enclosure activity. It may appear in proximity to related terms such as pightle, purpresture, or assart, all of which describe various forms of enclosure or appropriation from common or royal land.
The term has essentially no modern legal currency. Its research value is historical and contextual: identifying it correctly prevents misreading a document as describing ordinary private conveyance when in fact it records an encroachment on common rights. Disputes arising from such enclosures could generate litigation over common rights, admittance in copyhold, or manorial custom — so the surrounding documentary record may be richer than the inhog entry itself suggests.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the sole legal dictionary entry of record, defining inhog as "a nook or corner of a common or fallow field, inclosed and cultivated," citing Kennett's Parochial Antiquities and Cowell's legal interpreter. This definition is narrow but reliable for the purpose it serves: it identifies the term as a term of art from English agricultural and manorial practice, not a term of general common law doctrine.
Cowell's Interpreter, one of the earliest English legal dictionaries, is the foundational source here, and Kennett's Parochial Antiquities (1695) provides the antiquarian context. That Black's routes through these sources rather than through case law confirms that inhog never developed into a term with doctrinal legal content — it remained a descriptive term of land record, not a legal standard or cause of action. No other major historical law dictionary (Bouvier, Tomlin, Burrill) appears to carry a distinct entry for this term, which underscores its narrow and archaic scope.
Jurisdictional Note
Inhog is specific to English manorial and parish land records. It has no recognized use in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. Researchers working outside the English local history context are unlikely to encounter it.