Definition
An inquisition is a formal fact-finding process conducted by a jury impaneled by a sheriff or other officer, convened to examine and determine specific facts at the direction of a court or governmental authority. The term carries two related but distinct legal meanings:
1. The proceeding itself: An official inquiry or inquest — typically the examination of facts by a jury assembled under a writ of inquiry, as directed by a court. The sheriff impanels the jury, presides over the examination, and returns the findings.
2. The written instrument: The document recording the jury's findings is itself called an inquisition. In this sense, the term refers not to the proceeding but to its formal output — the written verdict or finding returned to the court.
In coroner practice, an inquisition refers specifically to the formal finding made by a coroner's jury upon examination of a death. If a coroner fails to hold the inquest, justices of gaol delivery and oyer and terminer historically had authority to conduct one in its place.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To inquire into; to make investigation concerning. In popular usage, "the Inquisition" refers almost exclusively to the historical Catholic ecclesiastical tribunals, particularly the Spanish Inquisition, connoting coercive interrogation and persecution.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The act of inquiring; inquiry; search; examination; inspection; investigation." Webster also acknowledges the judicial sense — official examination and the finding of a jury — placing the legal and common meanings in closer proximity than they sit today.
The gap matters for researchers: modern readers encountering "inquisition" in historical legal records will likely import connotations of religious persecution or coercion that are entirely absent from the procedural legal usage. In common-law practice, an inquisition was a routine, neutral instrument of civil and criminal administration — a jury's factual finding returned under court direction, with no necessary adversarial or punitive character.
Common Confusion
Inquisition, inquest, and inquiry are frequently used interchangeably in both historical sources and secondary literature, but they are not identical. An inquest is the body — the sheriff and jury — that conducts the examination. An inquisition is the proceeding or the written finding that body produces. An inquiry (or writ of inquiry) is the court's directive that sets the process in motion. Anderson's Dictionary of Law cross-references inquest and inquiry without distinguishing them from inquisition, which can lead researchers to conflate all three. Burrill draws the most useful distinction, defining inquisition specifically as "the finding of a jury under a writ of inquiry" — tying it to a particular procedural context rather than treating it as a synonym for any official examination.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in equity records, probate proceedings, real property law, and coroner's records will encounter "inquisition" as a technical term with specific procedural content. Three traps are worth noting:
First, the term appears across very different procedural contexts — damages assessments after default judgment, office findings in crown proceedings, and coroner's death inquiries — and the word alone does not tell you which context applies. Always read surrounding procedural context.
Second, Rapalje & Lawrence's entry fragments mid-sentence in available sources but points toward an important distinction: when an office (formal inquisition into crown rights) is not necessary to establish the crown's entitlement but only to instruct the officer before seizure, the proceeding takes a narrower form. This distinction matters in historical property and escheator records.
Third, in American practice the term largely fell from regular use by the late nineteenth century, displaced by the language of "inquiry," "inquest," and "jury finding." Encountering "inquisition" in post-Civil War American records may signal either a formal survival of older terminology or a coroner's context specifically. British and colonial records will use it more persistently and in a wider range of proceedings.
Corpus researchers cross-referencing coroner's proceedings, writs of inquiry, office findings, and escheator records should treat inquisition as the connective tissue linking those document types.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources converge on the core definition — a jury finding, particularly under a writ of inquiry — but vary in emphasis and depth.
Black's and Bouvier's both center on the sheriff-and-jury mechanism, with Bouvier adding the important point that the written instrument of decision shares the name. Bouvier also extends the term into coroner practice explicitly, noting the fallback jurisdiction of justices of gaol delivery when a coroner fails to act. Burrill refines the definition by anchoring inquisition specifically to the writ of inquiry context, which is the most technically precise usage.
Rapalje & Lawrence gestures toward the Exchequer's "office of instruction" — a variant proceeding in which the crown did not need an office to establish title but used the inquisition-style inquiry to inform the seizing officer. This is a nuance absent from the other sources and is particularly relevant to English revenue and property practice.
Anderson's cross-reference approach (see INQUEST; see INQUIRY) is accurate but unhelpful for distinguishing the terms, and researchers relying on Anderson alone may miss the inquisition-as-written-instrument usage entirely.
No source in this set addresses the broader Roman law or ecclesiastical origins of inquisitorial procedure, which are relevant context for civilians and canon law researchers but largely irrelevant to common-law procedural usage.
Jurisdictional Note
In English practice, inquisitions remained a live procedural term through the nineteenth century across coroner, escheator, and chancery contexts. American practice absorbed the concept but increasingly preferred "inquest" for coroner proceedings and "jury of inquiry" for damages assessments, making "inquisition" a marker of older or more formal drafting. Researchers in Louisiana or other civil-law-influenced jurisdictions should note that inquisitorial procedure carries a substantially different structural meaning derived from civilian tradition.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Inquest; Writ of Inquiry; Coroner's Proceedings; Office Findings