Definition
Latin term for "inquisition" or "inquest." In medieval and early English law, an inquisitio was a formal official inquiry conducted by royal authority to establish facts of legal consequence — most commonly, facts touching the king's feudal rights and revenues. The term appears frequently in historical legal records and instruments, particularly in connection with the administration of military tenures.
The dominant usage in English legal sources is the inquisitio post mortem (inquisition after death): a formal inquest of office held upon the death of any tenant-in-chief of the Crown. The proceeding existed to determine what lands the deceased held at the time of death, who the lawful heir was, and the heir's age. These facts were not merely administrative — they determined whether and which feudal incidents attached to the succession, including the king's rights to marriage (control over the heir's marriage), wardship (custody of an underage heir and management of the lands), relief (a payment owed by an adult heir to inherit), and primer seisin (the Crown's right to take the lands into hand briefly upon the tenant's death before delivering them to the heir).
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Inquisition" in modern English refers primarily to a formal inquiry or investigation, and by strong historical association, to the medieval ecclesiastical tribunals of the Roman Catholic Church that investigated and prosecuted heresy.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's defines "inquisition" as a judicial inquiry; an investigation conducted by a jury; and specifically, a finding of fact by a jury sworn to inquire into matters submitted to them. It also notes the ecclesiastical meaning.
The legal term inquisitio, as used in English feudal records, is narrower and more technical than either common usage suggests. The ecclesiastical connotation that dominates modern understanding is essentially irrelevant to English property law records where the term appears. The jury and inquiry elements are present, but the purpose is entirely fiscal and tenurial — establishing the Crown's revenue entitlements — not criminal or heretical investigation.
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Common Confusion
Inquisitio is sometimes read as a reference to ecclesiastical inquisition proceedings when encountered in medieval legal manuscripts or calendars of records. The two institutions are unrelated in function and legal effect. The inquisitio post mortem was a routine administrative proceeding within the common law system, producing a documented finding enrolled in Chancery. It carried no penal dimension. Researchers consulting Chancery records, Patent Rolls, or the published Calendars of Inquisitions Post Mortem should recognize the term as belonging to the administrative machinery of feudal land tenure, not to canon law or ecclesiastical discipline.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-1660 English legal history will encounter inquisitio and its variants repeatedly, primarily through the inquisitio post mortem. The practical significance is high: these documents are among the most systematically preserved records of medieval land tenure, succession, and family structure. The Calendars of Inquisitions Post Mortem — published by the Public Record Office and the List and Index Society — are the standard finding aids, but researchers must understand that the underlying Latin term and the abbreviated procedural shorthand of the original rolls differ from the calendared summaries.
The inquisitio post mortem ceased to have practical legal importance after the abolition of military tenures by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660, which eliminated the feudal incidents that gave the proceeding its purpose. Records after that date will not include this form of inquiry in its traditional function. Researchers should therefore treat the term as essentially a pre-1660 phenomenon in English common law sources.
Jurisdictional crossover matters here. The inquisitio as a procedural form also appears in ecclesiastical and civil law contexts on the Continent and in canon law tradition, where the term carries meanings closer to the modern association with ecclesiastical tribunals. Latin legal texts from Continental sources must not be read through the lens of English property law usage, and vice versa.
For corpus researchers, the term acts as a reliable marker of feudal tenure administration when found in common law records. Its appearance in a document is a strong signal that the surrounding text addresses questions of seisin, heirship, age of majority, and Crown revenue — concepts requiring fluency in the law of military tenures to interpret accurately.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary, Burrill's Law Dictionary, and the second edition supplement are closely aligned on this term. All three define inquisitio as an inquisition or inquest under old English law, with the inquisitio post mortem as the central application. All three identify the same core purposes of the inquiry: establishing the lands held by the deceased, identifying the heir, and determining age — each fact keyed to a specific feudal incident.
The entries across sources are nearly identical in substance, which reflects how settled and undisputed this definition was in the tradition of English legal lexicography. No meaningful divergence exists among the sources consulted.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide is any discussion of the procedural mechanics of the inquest itself — how juries were empaneled, how findings were enrolled, or how disputed findings were resolved. For that, researchers must move to treatises on feudal tenure, particularly Littleton's Tenures and the commentaries built upon it, or to the primary record literature.
The dictionaries also do not address the Continental or canon law uses of inquisitio, which is appropriate given their focus on English law but which researchers working across legal traditions should note as a gap.
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Jurisdictional Note
The inquisitio post mortem as a legal institution was specific to English common law and its administration of military tenures held of the Crown. It has no direct counterpart in Scots law or in the civil law systems of Continental Europe, though analogous inquiries into succession and heirship existed in various forms. Researchers working in Scottish records or in Irish colonial records should not assume that identical procedures and terminology operated in those jurisdictions without independent verification.
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