LE QUARREL - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

LE QUARRELAuthored

The Law Mind • 819 words

Definition

Le quarrel (also rendered "the quarrel" in English) is an ecclesiastical law term for a formal complaint lodged with an archbishop against an inferior ordinary — typically a bishop — for failing or refusing to administer justice in an ecclesiastical matter. Common grounds included an ordinary's refusal to give sentence in a church court proceeding, failure to institute a clerk presented to a benefice, or other delay or denial of ecclesiastical justice.

The remedy was directed upward through the church hierarchy: the aggrieved party brought the complaint to the provincial archbishop, who then held authority to compel the ordinary to act or to take jurisdiction over the matter himself. Because the complaint was typically made against both the dilatory judge and the party at whose instance justice was withheld, it was sometimes called a "double complaint."

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Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Quarrel" means a heated argument or disagreement between parties; colloquially, any dispute or fight.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Quarrel" — a brawl; a petty fight; also, a cause of dispute or complaint; ground of objection.

The Webster's 1913 entry actually preserves a trace of the legal meaning — "cause of complaint" — that has since faded from everyday use. In le quarrel, however, the term carries none of the adversarial or combative overtones of the common word. It denotes a formal, procedural complaint made through an institutional channel, not a personal dispute. Researchers encountering the term in historical ecclesiastical records should not read it as referring to litigation between private parties in any modern sense.

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Why It Matters in Research

Le quarrel is a narrow term of English ecclesiastical procedure that appears almost exclusively in pre-Reformation and early post-Reformation sources dealing with church court practice. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus will most likely encounter it in:

— Texts addressing the jurisdiction and procedure of the Court of Arches or provincial courts of Canterbury and York;
— Treatises on advowson and the institution of clergy to benefices, where delay in institution was a frequent trigger;
— Materials on the relationship between ordinary and metropolitan jurisdiction, particularly where bishops were accused of sitting on presented candidates.

The term drops out of active legal use with the erosion of ecclesiastical court jurisdiction in England following the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Act 1531 and subsequent Reformation statutes, and it never took meaningful root in American law. Researchers in U.S. sources will not encounter it in domestic practice.

The French-law framing ("le quarrel" rather than "the quarrel" or simply "quarrel") signals that the term was borrowed into English legal usage from Norman and Canonical sources and retained its French form as a term of art. This is a reliable marker that the text in which it appears is drawing on pre-modern ecclesiastical or civil-law learning rather than common-law authority.

Do not conflate this term with the procedural use of "quarrel" in civil pleading vocabulary, where it occasionally appeared in older reports as a synonym for "cause" or "action." Le quarrel is specifically an upward complaint within church hierarchy, not a cause of action at common law.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Rapalje & Lawrence provide the essential definition and correctly identify its two-sided character: the complaint runs against both the delinquent judge (the ordinary) and the party whose interest is served by the delay. This double-target structure reflects the canonical logic that obstruction of ecclesiastical justice implicates both the officer who should act and the litigant who benefits from inaction.

The Rapalje & Lawrence entry, though truncated in available form, aligns with the treatment found in older English ecclesiastical law writers. Jacob's Law Dictionary (various editions) and Cowel's Interpreter similarly treat le quarrel as a procedural remedy in metropolitan jurisdiction, and Burn's Ecclesiastical Law addresses the institution-of-clergy context in which the remedy most commonly arose. These sources are consistent on the basic structure; they diverge only in the degree of procedural detail they provide about what the archbishop could actually do once the complaint was received.

What historical dictionaries do not supply — and what researchers relying solely on these sources should be alert to — is any meaningful account of how frequently the remedy was actually used in practice, or how it interacted with the common-law writ of mandamus, which emerged as a competing (and eventually dominant) mechanism to compel institution of clergy.

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Jurisdictional Note

Le quarrel is a term of English ecclesiastical law with no equivalent in American jurisdiction. The ecclesiastical court structure that gave rise to the remedy was never transplanted to the American colonies or states. References to the term in American legal sources are purely historical or comparative.

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LE QUARRELmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

-A grievance made known by a clerk or other person, to the archbishop of the province, against the ordinary, for delaying or refusing to do justice in some cause ecclesiastical, as to give sentence, institute a clerk, &c. It is termed a double complaint, because it is and him at whose suit justice is denied or de most commonly made against both the judge laved; the effect whereof is, that the archbishop taking notice of the delay, directs his letters, under his authentical seal, to all clerks of his province, commanding them to admonish the ordinary, within a certain number of days, to do the justice required, or otherwise to appear before him or his official, and there allege the cause of his delay; and to signify to the ordinary that if he neither perform the thing enjoined, nor appear nor show cause against it, he himself, in his court of audience, will forthwith proceed to do the justice that is due.-Cowell. DOUBLE, or TREBLE COSTS.-The true mode of estimating the amount of double costs was, first to allow the successful party the single costs, including the expenses of witnesses, counsel's fees, &c., and then allow him one-half of the amount of the single costs, without deducting counsel's fees, &c. Treble costs consisted of the single costs, half the single costs, and half of that half. But the law as to these costs was repealed in England by the 5 and 6 Vict. c. 97, which enacted that the successful party should be entitled only to full and reasonable costs, to be taxed by the proper officer, which taxation should, as in ordinary cases, be subject to review. Double and treble costs are still allowed, under certain special circumstances, in a few of the States. DOUBLE COSTS, (what are). 9 Wend. (N. Y.) 443. (rule as to calculating). Penn. (N. J.) 110; 6 Wend. (N. Y.) 297, 321; 4 Barn. & C. 889; 1 Chit. 137 n.; 7 Dowl. & Ry. 484. (in a statute). 3 Nev. & M. 572.