Definition
QUARREL carries two distinct legal meanings, one technical and one broader:
1. In the law of releases and pleading, a term of art encompassing not only pending actions but also causes of action and the underlying grounds for suit. A release of all "quarrels" operates broadly: it discharges not merely litigation already commenced but any right to bring suit. In this usage, "quarrels," "controversies," and "debates" are treated as legal synonyms, each releasing the same scope of claims.
2. In ecclesiastical procedure, a formal complaint or grievance brought by a clerk or other person to an archbishop against an ordinary (a bishop or other church judge) for unreasonably delaying or refusing to do justice — for example, failing to give sentence in a cause, or declining to institute a clerk to a benefice. This proceeding was sometimes called a "double complaint" because it was commonly directed against both the ecclesiastical judge and the party at whose instance justice was withheld.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A dispute or heated argument, especially a verbal one; a ground or basis for objection or complaint; a propensity to argue.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Primarily a physical object — a square-headed arrow for a crossbow — with the sense of "dispute" present but secondary.
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant in both directions. Today's reader associates "quarrel" almost entirely with an interpersonal argument and would not recognize that in release instruments it functions as a comprehensive term of art sweeping in all legal claims, ripe or pending. The Webster's 1913 entry is a useful caution: in older texts, "quarrel" could appear in an entirely non-legal, non-dispute sense (the crossbow bolt), which could mislead researchers skimming period documents.
Common Confusion
Two confusions recur in research:
First, the colloquial reading. Researchers encountering "release of all quarrels" in historical instruments sometimes read the phrase as releasing only claims arising from a specific dispute or altercation, when the legal effect was far broader — a general release of all causes of action, whether related to any particular falling-out or not.
Second, the ecclesiastical and the civil uses. The "quarrel" as an archiepiscopal complaint procedure is entirely distinct from the release-law meaning, and the two appear in different document genres (church court records versus private instruments). Conflating them produces misreading in both directions.
Why It Matters in Research
The release-law meaning is the one most likely to appear in primary sources researchers encounter in the Law Mind corpus. General release instruments from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries commonly used the formula "all actions, suits, quarrels, controversies, and debates," and understanding that each item in that list was regarded as legally synonymous — not additive — is essential to interpreting the scope of the release. Coke's authority (Co. Litt. 8, 153) governed this interpretation for generations, so the Coke citation in multiple dictionary entries is a reliable anchor for tracing the doctrine.
Researchers working with ecclesiastical court records face a different challenge: the "double complaint" meaning virtually disappeared from legal practice after the nineteenth-century reforms dismantling the church court system in England. Sources after roughly 1860 rarely use "quarrel" in the ecclesiastical procedural sense, meaning it is primarily a pre-reform-era term in that context.
Both meanings reward attention to document genre: release instruments versus church court proceedings. Jurisdictional and period context resolves most ambiguities.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries show strong agreement on the release-law meaning. Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier all converge on the same proposition, each citing Coke's Littleton and Termes de la Ley to establish that "quarrel" in a release extends to causes of action and not merely pending suits. This consistency across four independent sources over several decades of publication indicates stable doctrine rather than contested law.
On the ecclesiastical meaning, only Black's 1st edition develops it with any specificity, describing the "double complaint" mechanism. The 2nd edition's entry trails off in the surviving excerpt before reaching that material ("In an untechnical sense, it signifie—"), and Rapalje and Bouvier omit it entirely. Researchers relying solely on Bouvier or Rapalje would have no awareness of the ecclesiastical procedural sense — a gap worth noting when using those sources as the primary reference.
None of the historical dictionaries address the Webster's 1913 crossbow-bolt meaning, which is not a legal sense but which appears in period literature and could cause confusion in corpus searches using keyword approaches.
Jurisdictional Note
The release-law doctrine reflected in the historical dictionaries is rooted in English common law and was received into American legal practice. The ecclesiastical sense has no meaningful American application, as the United States never established church courts with jurisdiction over causes of this type.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Releases (for the causes-of-action scope of general release instruments)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Ecclesiastical Courts (for the archiepiscopal complaint procedure)