Definition
Quae plura (sometimes rendered "Que Plura" or "Quje Plura" in older printed sources) is a Latin phrase meaning "what more" or "how many more." In old English legal practice, it was the name of a writ directed to an escheator commanding him to conduct a supplemental inquisition into lands and tenements held by a deceased person that had not been captured in an earlier office or inquisition.
When a person died holding land of the Crown, an escheator — a royal official responsible for identifying property that escheated or reverted to the Crown — would conduct an inquisition post mortem to determine what lands and tenements the decedent held at the time of death. If that initial inquisition was believed to be incomplete, omitting some portion of the decedent's landholdings, the writ of quae plura issued. The writ directed the escheator to inquire "what more" lands and tenements the party had held on the day he died, effectively reopening and supplementing the original inquisition.
The writ was a procedural remedy for deficiencies in the original escheatorial process, not an entirely new proceeding. Its purpose was to ensure the Crown's interests were fully identified and protected where the initial office had fallen short.
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Common Language
This is pure legal and procedural Latin terminology specific to English feudal administration. It has no counterpart in ordinary modern English usage and is not found in Wiktionary or Webster's 1913 as a general vocabulary entry. The COMMON LANGUAGE section does not apply.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering quae plura will almost exclusively find it in sources dealing with English feudal land tenure, escheators, and the administrative machinery of inquisitions post mortem — primarily pre-1700 English legal materials. Several navigational points matter:
Spelling instability is a real hazard. Older printed sources, including some editions of Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, render the phrase inconsistently: "que plura," "quae plura," and corrupted forms like "quje plura" appear depending on the printing era and typeface conventions of the source. Researchers searching digitized corpora should run variants.
This writ belongs to a cluster of writs and procedures tied to the escheatorial system, which itself was a creature of English feudal tenure — a system formally abolished in England by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660. By the time American colonial law was consolidating, escheators and inquisitions post mortem had little operational relevance, which explains why quae plura appears rarely or not at all in American legal authorities. Researchers in American sources who encounter this term are almost certainly reading a work that is directly drawing on English common law history or citing Fitzherbert.
Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium is the primary source Black's points to (255a). That treatise, first printed in the late fifteenth century and revised through multiple editions, is the closest thing to a comprehensive guide to the writs of the English common law courts. Any serious research into quae plura should begin there. Researchers should be aware that different editions of Natura Brevium carry different pagination and marginalia, so cross-referencing the citation requires attention to edition.
The broader research context is inquisitions post mortem — the Crown's administrative tool for identifying feudal incidents (wardship, relief, primer seisin) owed upon the death of a tenant-in-chief. Quae plura is a corrective mechanism within that system, not a standalone doctrine. Its appearance in a source usually signals that the surrounding text is addressing either the incompleteness of an earlier inquisition or the mechanics of escheatorial practice generally.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) is the sole historical dictionary source available for this entry. Its definition is brief but substantively accurate: the writ issues where an escheator's inquisition is believed to have omitted lands held by the decedent, and it commands a supplemental inquiry into "what more" lands and tenements the party held at death. Black's cites Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at 255a, which is the classical authority.
No other historical law dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus (at time of publication) include a separate entry for this term. Researchers should treat Black's definition as a starting point rather than a complete account. The definition captures the mechanical operation of the writ but does not address the procedural relationship between quae plura and the original inquisition post mortem, or the conditions under which the writ would or would not lie. For that depth, Fitzherbert and secondary scholarship on English feudal administration are necessary.
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Jurisdictional Note
Quae plura is a writ of English common law tied to the feudal system of land tenure and the escheatorial apparatus of the English Crown. It has no recognized American equivalent. Researchers working in English legal history prior to the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 will find it operative; researchers in post-1660 English law or any American jurisdiction should treat it as historical background only.
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