Definition
A writ or formal authority directed to an official person — typically the sheriff — commanding an inquiry into a matter touching the Crown's interests. In English practice, inquirendo most commonly denoted the authority itself rather than the resulting proceeding, but in a specific procedural context (see Bouvier below) it took the more precise form of a melius inquirendum: a corrective writ issued after an initial inquisition returned defectively on a capias utlagatum in outlawry proceedings, directing a second inquest to ascertain more accurately the value of lands or other property.
The term thus carries two related but distinct senses:
1. General authority. A royal or judicial authorization to a designated officer to hold an inquiry into matters affecting Crown revenues, escheats, forfeitures, or similar interests.
2. Corrective writ (melius inquirendum). A specific writ in outlawry procedure, issued when the sheriff returned an inquisition that was incomplete or inaccurate as to the value of the outlaw's lands, commanding a fresh inquest to remedy the deficiency.
Common Language
Wiktionary: "An authority to inquire."
The common usage captures the surface meaning but loses the procedural weight. In legal contexts inquirendo was not a general permission to investigate — it was a formal, Crown-issued authorization conferring specific official capacity to hold an inquest with legal effect. The distinction matters for corpus research: seeing the term in a historical document signals a formal Crown proceeding, not an informal investigation.
Common Confusion
Inquirendo is sometimes read as synonymous with inquisition or inquest, but the terms occupy different positions in the same procedural sequence. The inquirendo (or melius inquirendum) is the writ authorizing the inquiry; the inquisition is the formal finding produced by that inquiry; and the inquest is the body of jurors or officers conducting it. Conflating them obscures which stage of an outlawry or forfeiture proceeding a source is describing. Researchers encountering inquirendo should look for a corresponding inquisition as the downstream document.
Why It Matters in Research
Inquirendo is almost exclusively a term of Old English Crown practice and will appear in historical materials — Year Books, Chancery records, abridgments, and treatises on outlawry and forfeiture — rather than modern American or English sources. Its appearance is a reliable indicator that a document concerns Crown revenue interests: escheats, forfeitures on outlawry, recusancy fines, or similar fiscal proceedings of the English state.
Two research traps are worth noting. First, the general sense (authority to inquire) and the specific corrective writ sense (melius inquirendum) can look identical in older indexes and abridgments that collapse them under the single headword. Bouvier's is the most useful source here because it isolates the outlawry-procedure meaning and names the writ's full form. Second, American materials will virtually never use inquirendo as a live procedural term; if it appears in American legal writing, it is almost always historical exposition or quotation from English authority. Treat it as a marker of English law being imported or discussed, not as operative American procedure.
The capias utlagatum connection is the key navigational link: researchers following an outlawry proceeding through a corpus will move through the capias utlagatum (the writ to arrest the outlaw), to the inquisition (valuing his property), to the inquirendo or melius inquirendum if that inquisition was returned defectively. Understanding this sequence prevents misreading a melius inquirendum as the opening of a proceeding rather than a corrective step within one already underway.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core meaning — an authority to institute an official inquiry into Crown interests — and the wording across Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence is effectively identical, suggesting a common derived lineage for that formulation.
Bouvier's stands apart and is the most substantively useful. It alone situates inquirendo within a concrete procedural context (outlawry on capias utlagatum), names the corrective form (melius inquirendum), and explains the functional purpose: supplying an accurate valuation where the first inquisition was defective. This is not merely additional detail; it is a different and more actionable meaning than the other dictionaries provide.
What all four sources share is a limitation: none traces how the writ operated across different Crown courts (Chancery, Exchequer, Common Pleas) or explains when a melius inquirendum could issue versus other corrective remedies. Researchers needing that procedural depth will need to consult treatises on English outlawry practice or Chancery abridgments directly.
Jurisdictional Note
Inquirendo is a term of English Crown practice with no direct American procedural equivalent. It does not appear as operative procedure in any American jurisdiction. American courts and commentators encountering the term treat it as historical or comparative material. Canadian and Australian common law jurisdictions that preserved more of the English Crown prerogative framework may have closer analogues, but the writ form itself is obsolete.