INVENTORY. A list, schedule, or enumeration in writing, containing, article by article, the goods and chattels, rights and credits, and, in some cases, the lands and tenements, of a person or persons. In its most common acceptation, an inventory is a conservatory act, which is made to ascertain the situation of an intestate's estate, the estate of an insolvent, and the like, for the purpose of securing it to those entitled to it.

2. When the inventory is made of goods and estates assigned or conveyed in trust, it must include all the property conveyed.

3. In case of intestate estates, it is required to contain only the personal property, or that to which the administrator is entitled. The claims due to the estate ought to be separated; those which are desperate or had ought to be so returned. The articles ought to be set down separately, as already mentioned, and separately valued.

4. The inventory is to be made in the presence of at least two of the creditors of the deceased, or legatees or next of kin, and, in their default and absence, of two honest persons. The appraisers must sign it, and make oath or affirmation that the appraisement is just to the best of their knowledge. Vide, generally, 14 Vin. Ab. 465; Bac. Ab. Executors, &c., E 11; 4 Com. Dig. 14; Ayliffe's Pand. 414; Ayliffe's Parerg. 305; Com. Dig. Administration, B 7; 3 Burr. 1922; 2 Addams' Rep. 319; S. C. 2 Eccles. R. 322; Lovel. on Wills; 38; 2 Bl. Com. 514; 8 Serg. & Rawle, 128; Godolph. 150, and the article Benefit of Inventory.

TO INVEST, contracts. To lay out money in such a manner that it may bring a revenue; as, to invest money in houses or stocks; to give possession.

2. This word, which occurs frequently in the canon law, comes from the Latin word investire, which signifies to clothe or adorn and is used, in that system of jurisprudence, synonymously with enfeoff. Both words signify to put one into the possession of, or to invest with a fief, upon his taking the oath of fealty or fidelity to the prince or superior lord.

INVESTITURE, estates. The act of giving possession of lands by actual seisin When livery of seisin was made to a person by the common law he was invested with the whole fee; this, the foreign feudists and sometimes 'our own law writers call investiture, but generally speaking, it is termed by the common law writers, the seisin of the fee. 2 Bl. Com. 209, 313; Feame on Rem. 223, n. (z).

2. By the canon law investiture was made per baculum et annulum, by the ring and crosier, which were regarded as symbols of the episcopal jurisdiction. Ecclesiastical and secular fiefs were governed by the same rule in this respect that previously to investiture, neither a hishop, abbey or lay lord could take possession of a fief. conferred upon them previously to investiture by the prince.

3. Pope Gregory VI. first disputed the right of sovereigns to give investiture of ecclesiastical fiefs, A. D. 1045, but Pope Gregory VII. carried. on the dispute with much more vigor, A. D. 1073. He excommunicated the emperor, Henry IV. The Popes Victor III., Urban II. and Paul II., continued the contest. This dispute, it is said, cost Christendom sixty-three battles, and the lives of many millions of men. De Pradt.