ATTITLES - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

ATTITLESAuthored

The Law Mind • 673 words

Definition

An archaic Law French term meaning "assigned." Used in feudal and early common law contexts to indicate that a person, right, or obligation had been formally assigned or transferred to another party. The term appears in records of feudal tenures and conveyancing, functioning as a past-participial designation—identifying something or someone as having been made over to another.

The term is closely related to the broader family of feudal transfer vocabulary and sits adjacent to the concept of attornment, with which it shares etymological and functional roots.

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Common Confusion

ATTITLES is easily conflated with ATTORN and ATTORNMENT, and the confusion is understandable: all three terms arise from the same Law French root (tourner / attorner, to turn over or transfer) and appear in overlapping feudal contexts. The distinction is grammatical and functional. ATTORN is the verb—the act of transferring or turning over. ATTORNMENT is the noun—the act or transaction of turning over, particularly a tenant's formal acknowledgment of a new lord. ATTITLES is a past participial form meaning "assigned" or "having been transferred," used to describe the completed state of an assignment rather than the act itself. In historical records, these terms can appear in close proximity, and researchers should be careful not to treat them as synonyms.

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Why It Matters in Research

ATTITLES is a rare term with an extremely narrow footprint in the historical legal record. Burrill records it simply as "Assigned. Kelham."—a two-word entry pointing to Robert Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779) as the original source. Researchers encountering ATTITLES in manuscript records, plea rolls, or early printed Year Books should treat it as a descriptor indicating completed assignment, not as a term of art carrying independent legal weight.

The principal research trap is misidentification. Because the term is visually and phonetically similar to ATTORN, ATTITLES, and related forms, transcription errors in secondary sources—and even in digitized primary sources—are a real hazard. If you encounter the term in a document and its meaning is unclear from context, check whether the manuscript may instead read ATOURNE, ATOURNEY, or a variant spelling of ATTORNED, all of which appear with much greater frequency.

Researchers working in feudal tenure records, early conveyancing instruments, or Norman-period legal manuscripts will find that Law French technical vocabulary of this kind was not standardized in spelling. The same underlying concept might appear in a dozen orthographic variants across different scribal hands and regional traditions. Cross-referencing against Kelham directly, as well as Tomlins' *Law Dictionary* and the *Anglo-Norman Dictionary*, is advisable when the precise meaning is in dispute.

This term has no meaningful modern legal usage. It does not appear in contemporary statutes, case law, or legal practice. Its relevance is exclusively historical and paleographic.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's is the primary surviving legal dictionary entry for ATTITLES, and it is notably sparse—a single gloss ("Assigned") with a citation to Kelham. This brevity signals that even by Burrill's time (mid-nineteenth century), the term was recognized as an archaic curiosity rather than a working term of art. Burrill does not provide a usage example, a period of currency, or a doctrinal context, which limits what can be confidently said about its scope.

Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779) is the deeper source and the appropriate next stop for researchers who need more than a gloss. Kelham was working directly from Year Books and plea rolls, and his entries for Law French terms typically include illustrative quotations from those sources.

No entry for ATTITLES appears in Tomlin's *Law Dictionary*, Jacob's *Law Dictionary*, or Bouvier's *Law Dictionary*, which suggests the term was either too obscure or too narrow to warrant independent treatment in those works. Its absence from the major common law dictionaries underscores its status as a marginal term, useful primarily for decoding specific historical documents rather than for understanding any doctrinal concept.

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ATTITLESmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

L. Fr. Assigned. Kelham. ATTORN, Atturn. [L. Lat. attornare, atturnare; from Fr. attorner, to turn over, or transfer; or tourner, to turn or exchange, to give one thing in place of another.] In feudal law. To transfer or turn over to another. Where a lord aliened his seigniory, he might, with the consent of the tenant, and in some cases without, (velit nolit) attorn or transfer the homage and service of In old practice. To attorn; to put in one's the latter to the alienee or new lord. Bract. place; to appoint a substitute or attorney. fol. 81 b, 82. In such case, he was somePateat universis per presentes, quod ego, times said to attorn or transfer the tenant A. de B., attornavi, et in loco meo constitui himself, (attornare tenentem), and the tenant C. de D.; Know all men by these prewas said to be attorned, (attornari, attorna-sents, that I, A. of B., have attorned, and bitur.) Id. ibid. Id. fol. 169. To consent to a transfer; to transfer one's self, or one's services.-Where a tenant consented to the grant or transfer of the seigniory, he was said to attorn (properly, to attorn himself) to the grantee; that is, to transfer his services to him, and agree to become his tenant. 2 Bl. Com. 288. "Sir, I attorn to you by force of the said grant," was the form of words by which this consent was usually expressed. Litt. sect. 551, 553, 554. This is the origin of the modern practice of attornment, (q. v.) See infra. In modern law. To consent to the transfer of a rent or reversion. A tenant is said to attorn, when he agrees to become the tenant of the person to whom the reversion has been granted. See Attornment. In old practice. To put in one's place; put in my place C. of D. Reg. Orig. 172. Vobis præcipimus quod attornatum quem W. per literas suas patentes loco suo attonare voluerit-recipiatis; we command you that you receive the attorney whom W. by his letters patent may choose to attorn in his place. Id. 172 b. The words attornare, attornavi, attornavit, attornaverat, &c., are of constant occurrence in the forms of letters of attorney, and writs de attornato recipiendo, in the Register. Reg. Orig. 26-29.