Definition
A writ in old English practice directing an escheator to conduct a further inquiry into the lands and tenements held by a deceased person at the time of death. The writ issued when an inquisition — a formal administrative finding — had already been made by the escheator in a given county, but it was believed that not all of the decedent's property had been identified and returned in that original office. The writ commanded the escheator to inquire what more (the literal meaning of the Latin phrase) lands and tenements the deceased held on the day of death, ensuring that the Crown's potential interest in the estate was fully accounted for.
The writ belongs to the machinery of feudal tenure administration, specifically the escheator's function of identifying property that might revert or escheat to the Crown or a mesne lord upon a tenant's death without heirs or upon attainder.
Common Confusion
Quz plura is closely related to, but distinct from, the general inquisition post mortem, which was the original inquiry into a decedent's landholdings. The quz plura writ is a supplemental remedy — it presupposes that a prior inquisition has already been held and found wanting. Researchers should not treat the two instruments as interchangeable. The original inquisition established what was known; the quz plura pursued what remained unknown or concealed.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical English legal sources dealing with feudal administration and the office of the escheator, roughly from the medieval period through the early modern era. Researchers working in English legal history, property law history, or the history of feudal tenure will encounter it in Year Books, Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, and similar practitioner materials. It has no living counterpart in modern Anglo-American law.
The principal research trap is unfamiliarity with the escheator's administrative role. Without understanding that escheators were royal officers charged with identifying land falling to the Crown, the function of this writ is opaque. The writ presupposes a system in which incomplete disclosure of a decedent's real property was both possible and legally consequential — a concern largely dissolved by the abolition of feudal tenures in England (Tenures Abolition Act 1660) and the subsequent transformation of succession law.
Researchers should also be aware that the spelling in historical sources is not uniform. Variant spellings and the abbreviation of Latin phrases in manuscript sources can make identification difficult when working with original records rather than printed digests.
The writ is connected in practice to the broader family of prerogative writs and to the Crown's fiscal rights in land. Understanding quz plura requires understanding primer seisin, wardship, relief, and the general scheme of incidents of tenure — all of which bear on why incomplete inquisitions mattered to the Crown.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the only dictionary treatment in the Law Mind corpus. The entry is brief but accurate, identifying the writ's function, its triggering condition (a prior incomplete inquisition), and its operative command (to inquire what more lands the party held). Black's cites Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at 255a, which remains the primary practitioner authority for the writ.
No secondary development or divergence among historical dictionaries can be assessed from a single source. The absence of the term from later editions of Black's and from American legal dictionaries generally reflects the writ's status as a purely historical English instrument with no transplanted American equivalent. Researchers should go directly to Fitzherbert and to the relevant records of the Court of Wards and Liveries for substantive treatment beyond the dictionary level.
Jurisdictional Note
Quz plura is an instrument of English law only, with no recognized equivalent in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. It is irrelevant outside the context of English feudal and early modern real property administration.