Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning to restore a person to the protection of the law — specifically, to reverse the legal condition of outlawry. To inlagare someone was to formally reinstate them as a person entitled to the law's benefit and protection, ending the legal disabilities imposed upon them as an outlaw. The act was the precise legal opposite of utlagare (to outlaw), just as the resulting status of inlagh (a person within the law's protection) was the opposite of utlagh (an outlaw).
Common Confusion
INLAGARE / UTLAGARE: These two Latin terms are mirror opposites and must not be conflated. Utlagare is the act of placing a person outside the law's protection — outlawing. Inlagare is the act of restoring that protection. Historical sources occasionally print utlagare as "utlagare," "utlagh," or variants, while inlagare appears as "inlagary," "inlagation," or "inlagh" depending on context and source. Researchers encountering any of these variants in a historical document should confirm which direction — exclusion or restoration — the text is describing.
Why It Matters in Research
Inlagare belongs to a cluster of interrelated Latin and Anglo-Saxon terms governing the legal status of outlaws in medieval English law. A researcher encountering any one of these terms in a primary source will almost certainly need the others: inlagare (the act of restoration), utlagare (the act of outlawing), inlagh (a person within the law), and utlagh or utlaga (an outlaw). Rapalje & Lawrence treats inlagare, inlagary/inlagation, and inlagh as three distinct but connected entries, which is a useful structural signal — the act, the result, and the status are each named separately in the historical vocabulary.
The practical trap in historical sources is that inlagare and its cognates appear in contexts where the procedural and political stakes were high: the reversal of outlawry could restore property rights, inheritance capacity, and the ability to appear in court. A document recording inlagation is not merely a pardon; it is a legal restoration with substantive consequences. Researchers working in medieval plea rolls, royal writs, or Bracton's treatise will find the term embedded in that procedural context.
The word "inlaw" — the natural English equivalent — never took hold in common usage, as Burrill notes. This means the concept survived only in its Latin form in legal sources, while the opposite concept ("outlaw" and "to outlaw") passed fully into ordinary English. This asymmetry can cause researchers to underestimate the significance of the restoration procedure: outlawry is culturally familiar; its reversal is not.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree on the core meaning without meaningful divergence. All identify inlagare as the reversal of outlawry and as the opposite of utlagare. The differences among them are of depth, not substance.
Black's (both editions) provides the baseline: to restore to the protection of the law, with reference to Bracton and Du Cange. The second edition text appears to contain a typographical artifact ("uflagare" for "utlagare"), which is a reminder that even standard reference editions can carry copy errors worth checking against the first edition.
Burrill adds the most etymological texture, tracing the term to the Latin in and the Saxon laga (law), and quoting Fleta and Spelman alongside Bracton. His note that the English word "inlaw" was once used in Saxon and occasionally thereafter, but was never retained, is historically useful and not replicated in the other sources.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the most structurally informative because it explicitly lists inlagare, inlagary/inlagation, and inlagh as separate entries, making visible the terminological family that surrounds the act of restoration. The citation to Cowell (John Cowell's Interpreter, 1607) alongside Bracton places the term in both the medieval common law tradition and the early modern legal lexicography tradition.
No source provides extended procedural detail on how inlagation was accomplished — whether by royal writ, court proceeding, or charter. That gap is characteristic of the historical law dictionaries generally: they define the term but do not reconstruct the procedure. Researchers needing the procedural dimension should consult Bracton directly (lib. 3, tr. 2, c. 14) and Fleta (lib. 1, c. 28, § 14).