Definition
An archaic term appearing in old English legal records meaning "quick" or "living," used specifically to describe a live beast or living animal. The term is a variant spelling of the Middle English word for "quick" in its older sense of "alive" or "living," and appears in historical property and livestock records to distinguish living animals from dead ones.
Common Confusion
QUYKE should not be confused with "quicksand," "quicksilver," or other compound uses of "quick" that have nothing to do with livestock. More relevantly, it should be distinguished from "quickening" as used in historical criminal law and medical jurisprudence, where the term referred to fetal movement and had significant legal consequences in abortion-related prosecutions and estate matters involving posthumous heirs. The two usages share a common root meaning of "alive" but operate in entirely separate legal contexts and should not be conflated when reading historical sources.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering QUYKE in historical English records — particularly those involving livestock, estate inventories, feudal renders, or agricultural tenures — should recognize it as a descriptor of living animals rather than a term of legal art with independent doctrinal content. Its significance is orthographic and contextual: variant spellings in medieval and early modern records are common, and the same underlying concept may appear as "quick," "quyk," "quicke," or QUYKE depending on the scribe, period, and regional tradition.
The distinction between live and dead animals had practical legal consequences in historical property law. Renders, heriots, and certain feudal dues were often calculated or satisfied differently depending on whether livestock was living or dead. A record specifying a QUYKE beast as part of a heriot or manorial obligation signaled that the lord was entitled to a living animal capable of use or labor, not a carcass. Researchers working with manorial court rolls, custumals, or estate surveys should treat the term accordingly.
Because QUYKE is a purely archaic form with no modern legal survival, it will not appear in standard modern legal research tools. Its occurrence is confined to manuscript sources, printed calendars of historical records, and specialized glossaries of medieval English law and estate management. Burrill cites Cowell's *Interpreter* (1607) as the authority, making Cowell's glossary an appropriate secondary source for further context when the term appears in a specific document.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides a compact and accurate entry: "In old records. Quick; living; a quick or live beast. Cowell." This is consistent with the well-established older English usage of "quick" to mean alive, as opposed to dead — a usage that persists in modern English only in fossilized phrases such as "the quick and the dead." Burrill adds no independent doctrinal gloss beyond the Cowell reference, which is appropriate given that QUYKE carries descriptive rather than doctrinal weight.
No substantive divergence among historical sources is expected for a term of this type. The entry in Burrill is derivative of Cowell, and researchers needing further elaboration should consult Cowell's *Interpreter* directly. Jacob's *Law Dictionary* and Tomlin's revision of Jacob may also contain entries under "quick" or related livestock terminology that bear on the same practical context.