Definition
To present has two distinct legal meanings, each operating in a separate doctrinal context.
1. Ecclesiastical law. To offer a clerk (an ordained minister) to the bishop of a diocese for institution to a benefice. The act of presenting was the formal exercise of an advowson — the right of patronage over a church living — and initiated the process by which a patron caused a clergyman to be appointed to a vacant parish. The presentation itself did not confer the living; institution by the bishop and induction into the temporalities were still required to complete the appointment.
2. Criminal law / grand jury procedure. To find and lay before a court, in a formal judicial capacity, a charge or accusation. A grand jury presents an offense when it returns a presentment — a formal accusation originating from the jury's own knowledge or observation, rather than from a prosecutor's indictment. The word was treated in early common law as an essential term of art: its use in a presentment signaled the jury's independent, inquisitorial function rather than mere endorsement of a bill tendered by the Crown.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To present means to show or offer something to another; to introduce a person; to give a gift or award; or to perform before an audience.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "To bring or introduce into the presence of someone, especially a superior; to offer to view or notice; to lay before a court or official."
The legal meanings of to present are narrower and procedurally loaded in ways ordinary usage does not capture. In both the ecclesiastical and criminal senses, the act of presenting is not merely showing or offering — it is the performance of a formal legal act with specific procedural consequences. Presenting a clerk to a bishop initiates an ecclesiastical appointment process governed by canon and common law. Presenting an offense by a grand jury exercises an independent accusatorial power that bypasses the prosecutor's initiative. Neither maps cleanly onto the everyday sense of bringing something to someone's attention.
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Common Confusion
To present (grand jury) is sometimes conflated with to indict. The distinction is procedurally significant. An indictment is a formal charge submitted to the grand jury by the prosecutor, found by the jury as a true bill. A presentment originates with the jury itself, from the jury's own knowledge, without a bill having been tendered by the Crown or prosecution. The verb to present belongs to the presentment side of this distinction. In jurisdictions and periods where grand jury presentments have fallen into disuse, the distinction has practical relevance mainly for reading historical records and pleadings.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter to present across three separate bodies of law — ecclesiastical, criminal procedure, and (in derivative form) constitutional law — and the term carries no consistent signal about which domain applies. Context is everything.
In historical ecclesiastical records and English common law materials, to present will appear in disputes over advowsons, simony, lapses of presentation, and the rights of guardians or lords during vacancies. The ecclesiastical meaning is essentially obsolete in American law but persists in English legal history, in Church of England materials, and in property law discussions tracing the origins of advowson doctrine.
In grand jury materials, to present predates modern indictment practice and appears in historical pleading forms, early state constitutional provisions, and colonial records. Researchers reading pre-nineteenth-century American criminal pleadings should not assume that present and indict are interchangeable; a document's choice of term may signal something about the procedural path the case took.
The derivative noun presentment appears in the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 7) in a different sense again — the Presentment Clause governing how legislation reaches the President. That constitutional usage is related etymologically but procedurally distinct from grand jury presentment. Researchers moving between criminal procedure and constitutional law sources should not allow either to bleed into the other.
Burrill flags that to present was held to be an essential word in criminal law pleading — meaning its presence or absence in a formal charging document was not mere style but could be legally operative. This matters when reading historical indictments or presentments and assessing whether a pleading would have been held sufficient.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary covers both meanings concisely and accurately, citing Blackstone's Commentaries for the ecclesiastical sense and a Shower report for the proposition that to present is an essential word in criminal procedure. The entry is brief but reliable as a navigational pointer to the two principal doctrinal homes.
What Burrill does not address is the constitutional dimension — the Presentment Clause — which draws on the same root concept but belongs to a third, distinct legal context. Historical dictionaries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generally treat the ecclesiastical and criminal senses as the primary legal meanings, reflecting a period when both were still active areas of practice. Researchers relying solely on historical dictionaries may therefore miss the constitutional presentment context entirely, and will find limited guidance on the American grand jury's declining use of independent presentments across the nineteenth century.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia — "The Legislative Process: Bicameralism, Presentment, and the Veto" (for the Presentment Clause and its constitutional significance)
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia — "Compulsory Process: Right to Present Defense Witnesses" (for the criminal procedural context of presenting evidence and witnesses at trial)
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