Definition
INL. In old English law, an abbreviated or variant reference to inlagery (also spelled inlagerie), the formal act by which a person who had been outlawed was restored to the protection of the law and to the rights and liberties of a subject. The term appears in historical sources as a shorthand connected to the fuller form inlaga and the process of inlagare — to restore an outlaw to legal standing. The restored individual regained the capacity to sue, to hold property, and to receive the law's protection, all of which were forfeit upon outlawry.
The concept sits at the direct opposite of outlawry: where outlawry cast a person beyond the law's protection, inlagery brought them back within it.
Why It Matters in Research
INL as an isolated abbreviation is almost exclusively a paleographic and indexing artifact — researchers encounter it in marginal notations, legal glossaries, and abridgment indexes pointing toward inlagery or inlaga rather than as a standalone operative term in instruments or pleadings. Its primary research value is as a pointer, not a definition.
Researchers working in medieval English legal records, plea rolls, or chancery materials should treat INL as a truncation and follow it to inlaga, inlagare, or inlagery for the substantive doctrine. Burrill's entry itself redirects immediately to those fuller forms. The abbreviation does not appear as a recognized term of art in post-medieval common law sources, and will not be found in American legal materials in any operative sense.
The critical trap is treating INL as a complete entry rather than a fragment. Historical abridgments and manuscript indices frequently cut terms mid-word, and without awareness of the inlagery/outlawry framework, the abbreviation is opaque.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source capturing this term, and Burrill himself treats INL as a gateway entry, immediately cross-referencing Cowell, Blount, and Spelman's Glossarium for the substantive content. This is characteristic of Burrill's method with archaic Anglo-Norman and medieval Latin terms: he records the abbreviated or variant form to assist researchers encountering it in older sources, then routes them to fuller authority.
Cowell's Interpreter and Blount's Law Dictionary — both standard references on archaic English legal vocabulary — address inlagery in fuller form. Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum is the deepest historical source on the term's Latin and Law French roots (inlagare, inlageria). None of these sources treat INL as an independent substantive entry; they treat it as a phonetic or scribal variation leading to the same concept.
What historical dictionaries collectively make clear is that inlagery was a formal legal act requiring authority — it was not self-executing. The restoration of an outlaw to legal standing required royal or judicial action, and the records of that action are what researchers are most likely to encounter when they come across INL or its cognates in primary sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Inlagery and outlawry in their medieval English forms have no direct American legal counterpart. American law abolished formal outlawry as a legal status early in the republic. INL in this sense is exclusively relevant to English legal history research and has no operative meaning in any current jurisdiction.