Definition
A formal inquiry conducted by an officer of the Crown — typically the sheriff, coroner, or escheator — to determine whether the sovereign had a legal right to take possession of lands, tenements, goods, or chattels. The inquest was conducted either by virtue of the officer's inherent authority (virtute officii) or pursuant to a writ issued for that specific purpose, or by commissioners specially appointed to investigate. A jury of no fixed number — twelve, more, or fewer — heard the matter and returned findings on which the Crown's claim to possession depended.
The inquest of office was the procedural mechanism by which the Crown established its entitlement before actually seizing property. It operated as a kind of evidentiary foundation: without the finding of an inquest, the Crown's title to possession was legally incomplete. Typical occasions for an inquest included the death of a tenant-in-chief holding land of the king, the attainder or outlawry of a subject, the reversion of an escheat, the forfeiture of goods, or any other event that might vest property rights in the sovereign.
Common Confusion
The inquest of office is distinct from the coroner's inquest, though both involved a crown officer, a jury, and formal inquiry. The coroner's inquest investigates cause of death; the inquest of office investigates the Crown's property rights. The two could theoretically intersect — a coroner inquiring into a death might simultaneously conduct an inquest of office to determine whether goods of a suicide or felon escheated to the Crown — but they serve separate legal functions and should not be conflated. Researchers encountering the term "inquest" in historical sources should confirm which type is meant from context.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of almost exclusively historical significance. The inquest of office belongs to the feudal and early modern English legal world; it has no direct counterpart in modern American or contemporary English law. Researchers will encounter it primarily in:
— Pre-nineteenth-century English reports and Year Books dealing with escheats, forfeitures, attainders, and the rights of the Crown to real and personal property.
— Colonial American legal materials, where some Crown prerogative procedures were transplanted into early American practice before being abolished or superseded.
— Historical treatises on feudal tenure, particularly discussions of the incidents of tenure that vested property in the lord or king upon certain events.
The key research trap is assuming that because an inquest of office was conducted, the Crown's possession automatically followed. The finding of the inquest established the legal basis for possession, but the effect depended on the underlying legal theory — escheat, forfeiture, attainder — which had its own procedural and substantive rules. A researcher must trace not just the inquest but the legal event that triggered it.
Another trap: the term "office" here does not mean a governmental bureau or administrative position in the modern sense. It derives from the officer's public function — the inquiry conducted by virtue of official authority. Historical sources that use "office" in this older sense can confuse researchers trained on modern administrative terminology.
The inquest of office also carries comparative relevance for researchers studying the development of due process. The procedure was one of the points of friction in the long English constitutional debate over what procedural protection a subject was owed before the Crown could seize property. That debate has deep roots in Magna Carta scholarship and connects forward to modern takings and forfeiture doctrine, though the procedural form is wholly different.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Burrill's, and Bouvier's are in close agreement, with Burrill adding the Latin equivalent (inquisitio ex officio) and Bouvier providing the most detail on jury composition. All three draw substantially from the same tradition — Blackstone's Commentaries (Book 3, Chapter 17) and Finch's Law are the apparent common sources — and no significant divergence exists among the three dictionaries on substance.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the practical obsolescence of the procedure. By the time Black's first edition appeared in 1891, the inquest of office had long been superseded in England by statutory procedures, and American law had largely abandoned it. The dictionary entries preserve the historical form without flagging that researchers are unlikely to encounter a live inquest of office in any active legal proceeding. That silence is worth noting: a researcher who reads the Black's entry without historical context might not realize the term is almost entirely a matter of legal archaeology.
Bouvier's citation to 3 Blackstone's Commentaries 258 and Finch's Law 82 are the most useful pointers for researchers seeking primary elaboration. Both are genuine sources in the historical tradition.
Jurisdictional Note
The inquest of office was a creature of English Crown prerogative and feudal tenure doctrine. American states largely abolished or never adopted the procedure following independence, as the prerogative rights of the Crown had no sovereign counterpart in the new republic. Researchers should not assume that references to inquest of office in early American colonial or state materials carry the same procedural content as the English form; local adaptation and statutory replacement varied considerably by colony and state.