ATTORNER

Definition

To attorner is to formally acknowledge and accept a new lord or landlord — to turn over one's feudal or tenurial allegiance from one superior to another. The word functions as a verb in historical legal usage: a tenant who "attorns" is one who recognizes the transfer of lordship and agrees to hold from the new lord on the same terms previously owed to the old one. ATTORNER is the infinitive or imperative form of that act, encountered in Old French and early Law French legal texts. The act described is called attornment. The person performing it is the tenant. The occasion for it is typically a conveyance, grant, or inheritance by which the lord's interest passes to a new holder — without the tenant's attornment, the transfer was historically incomplete and the new lord could not enforce the tenurial relationship. ---

Common Confusion

ATTORNER is not the same root as ATTORNEY, though both derive from the French tourner (to turn). An attorney turns his authority toward another — acts in another's place. An attorner turns his tenure toward another — acknowledges a new lord. The similarity in spelling has caused confusion in historical legal reading, and Burrill himself flags the connection by placing ATTORNEY immediately after ATTORN in his entry sequence. The conceptual overlap is real but limited: both involve a kind of formal redirection of legal relationship, but the contexts, consequences, and doctrines are entirely distinct. ---

Why It Matters in Research

This term is almost exclusively encountered in medieval and early modern English legal sources — Year Books, Britton, Bracton, Littleton's Tenures, and early chancery records. Researchers working in those materials need to recognize ATTORNER and its cognates (attorn, attornment, attorned) as technical terms of feudal land law, not loose synonyms for "agree" or "consent." The key navigational point: ATTORNER signals the moment of formal feudal consent. Its presence in a document tells you the context involves a transfer of a lordship interest — a grant of the reversion, a conveyance of a manor, an inheritance — and that the drafter was concerned with whether the tenure relationship survived that transfer. The tenant's willingness or refusal to attorn was legally consequential: a tenant who refused could not be compelled under early common law to recognize the new lord's right to services, and a new lord who had not received attornment lacked certain remedies. By the Statute of Anne (1705) in England, the requirement of tenant attornment to perfect a conveyance of reversion was largely abolished. After that point, ATTORNER and its variants largely disappear from operative legal text and survive only in historical pleading, recitals in old deeds, and scholarly commentary. Researchers reading 18th-century and later sources may encounter the term as a relic form in deeds copying earlier precedents, even where the doctrine itself no longer applied. The Burrill entry cross-references Britton (c. 68), a late 13th-century legal treatise written in Law French under the authority of Edward I. That citation is the anchor for the definition: the lord's ability to "attorn the homage and service" of his tenant, and the question of a tenant who "of his own will" refuses to attorn to a new lord. These passages capture the two-sided nature of the act — it could be initiated by the lord (who attorns the tenant's service to a new grantee) or performed by the tenant (who attorns himself to a new lord). Both directions appear in the primary sources and should be distinguished in research. Jurisdictionally, attornment doctrine developed in English common law and was carried into early American colonial property law, but it was abolished or rendered irrelevant by statute in most American jurisdictions during the 18th and 19th centuries. Its primary research significance today is in understanding pre-modern English land records and in tracing the doctrinal history of landlord-tenant privity. ---

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's entry is spare but precise. He gives the Law French form, the English gloss ("to attorn or transfer"), and two citations to Britton — both of which illuminate the doctrine rather than merely illustrating the word. The first citation covers the lord's side of the transaction; the second covers the tenant's refusal. This is more useful than a simple definition because it shows the term operating in both directions. Burrill does not elaborate on the legal consequences of refusal, the historical abolition of the requirement, or the distinction between voluntary and compelled attornment. Researchers relying only on Burrill will have the word's meaning but not the doctrinal stakes. For the fuller picture, Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 309a et seq.) and Littleton's Tenures (sections on attornment) remain the standard reference points for understanding what rode on the act of attorning. ---

Jurisdictional Note

Attornment as a formal legal requirement was abolished in England by the Statute of Anne, 4 Anne c. 16 (1705). American jurisdictions largely followed suit by the late colonial or early republic period. Modern landlord-tenant law does not require a tenant's formal attornment when a landlord's interest transfers, though some commercial lease drafting still includes an attornment clause (often paired with non-disturbance agreements) as a matter of contract rather than doctrine. ---

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