Definition
Intrare is a Latin and Law Latin term meaning "to enter." It appears in two distinct senses in historical English legal records:
1. Procedural sense (Law Latin): To enter — as in entering a plea, entering an appearance, or making a formal entry in court records. Used in old English practice to describe the act of formal entry into a judicial proceeding or record.
2. Land management sense (Medieval Latin, old records): To take in land; specifically, to drain marshy or waterlogged ground and convert it to herbage or pasture. In this sense, the term describes a form of land reclamation that transformed unproductive wetland into cultivable or grazeable ground.
Common Confusion
The two meanings of intrare are historically unrelated in application, though they share the same root. A researcher encountering intrare in a court roll or plea record should not assume the land-reclamation sense, and vice versa. Context — whether the document is a judicial proceeding or a land survey or estate record — is the controlling guide.
Why It Matters in Research
Intrare is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal and administrative documents. Its significance is primarily interpretive: the word is untranslated in many manuscript records and early printed legal texts, and misreading it can produce substantial confusion about the nature of a transaction or proceeding.
In procedural documents — plea rolls, court records, and early common law practice materials — intrare signals formal entry: an appearance entered, a plea recorded, a party formally brought within the jurisdiction of the court. This usage connects to the broader vocabulary of entry in common law practice, including the concept of "entering" judgments and the formal record-keeping that defined medieval and early modern English courts.
In estate, survey, and agrarian records, intrare in its land-reclamation sense is a term of agricultural and property management. The practice of "inning" land — draining marshes and fens to create productive pasture — was economically significant in low-lying regions of England, particularly in the Fens and coastal areas. Records using intrare in this sense may appear in manorial surveys, monastic records, drainage commissions, and Chancery proceedings involving disputed reclaimed land. Researchers working in those document types should be alert to this usage.
The rarity of intrare in modern legal writing means it will appear almost only in historical sources. It is unlikely to surface in nineteenth-century American legal materials except in treatises with heavy Latin apparatus. Researchers in English legal history, ecclesiastical records, and medieval land law are the primary audience for this term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core entry, drawing on Cowell's Interpreter for the land-reclamation sense. Burrill treats the two senses distinctly: the Law Latin procedural meaning (to enter, in old English practice) and the Medieval Latin agrarian meaning (to take in land, to inn it, to drain marshy ground). The reference to Cowell is significant — John Cowell's Interpreter (1607) is one of the foundational sources for archaic legal and administrative vocabulary in English records, and its authority on terms of this kind is well established in the historical lexicography of English law.
Rapalje & Lawrence do not treat intrare directly as a headword but address the related concept of entry and appearance in the context of intervention — touching the procedural world in which intrare's court-record sense operates. Their treatment of intervention and appearance illuminates the procedural context without engaging the Latin term itself.
Neither source is comprehensive on intrare. The land-reclamation sense in particular receives only brief treatment, and neither dictionary situates the term within the broader history of English drainage law or manorial practice. Researchers needing deeper context for the agrarian sense should consult works on English agrarian history and manorial record interpretation rather than legal dictionaries alone.
Jurisdictional Note
Intrare as a technical term belongs entirely to English legal and administrative history. It has no meaningful presence in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions as a term of art and is not found in modern statutory or case law contexts.