Definition
Atturnatus is the Latin and Law Latin form of the term that became "attorney" in modern English legal usage. In old English law, an atturnatus was a person appointed to manage the legal affairs of another — specifically, one who appeared in court in the name of a principal, conducted causes on that principal's behalf, and answered for the principal in legal proceedings. The role was essentially that of a substitute or stand-in: the atturnatus stepped into the place of another and acted with delegated authority.
The term encompassed both what we might now call an attorney-in-fact (a private agent authorized to act for another) and the forerunner of what became the professional attorney-at-law. The distinction between private agency and court representation was not sharply drawn in early English legal practice; both functions merged in the single concept of one who "turns" to another's service.
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Common Confusion
Atturnatus, procurator, responsalis, nuntius, and missus were used interchangeably or near-interchangeably in medieval English and continental sources for the same functional role. Researchers encountering these terms in historical records should not assume they designate distinct offices or different degrees of authority. The variation is primarily one of register and source tradition — civil law texts favored procurator; ecclesiastical practice used responsalis or nuntius; English common law sources gravitated toward atturnatus. The underlying concept is the same: a delegated representative acting on another's behalf.
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Why It Matters in Research
Atturnatus is a threshold term for any researcher working in medieval English legal records, Year Books, or early plea rolls. It will appear in Latin writs, court rolls, and formularies through the medieval period and into the early modern era before the anglicized "attorney" fully displaces it in legal writing.
The critical navigational point is the conceptual range of the term. When a document names a party as atturnatus, it does not automatically signal a professional legal practitioner in the modern sense. In early usage, the term covers any authorized substitute — a steward acting for a lord, a factor managing commercial affairs, or a formal court representative. Researchers must read context carefully to determine whether the atturnatus in a given document is a professional advocate, a private agent, or a general factotum.
The term also connects directly to the doctrine of attornment (the tenant's formal acknowledgment of a new landlord), which shares the same root concept of "turning" or substituting one party for another. Researchers working on feudal tenure and land transfer records will encounter atturnatus and related forms in close proximity to attornment clauses. These are distinct legal acts — the agent and the tenant's acknowledgment — but their shared etymology and proximity in sources can create confusion.
Historical sources before the fifteenth century may use atturnatus where later sources would specify either attorney-at-law (a court officer) or attorney-in-fact (a private delegate). The professional and the private senses diverge over time, but in early records they are not reliably separated.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the most useful synthesis available in the Law Mind corpus for this term. Burrill correctly identifies atturnatus as the Latin root of "attorney," defines it as one who manages another's affairs by direction of the principal, and catalogues the synonyms — procurator, responsalis, nuntius, missus — that circulated alongside it in historical sources. Burrill's brief etymology, tracing the term to the French tourner (to turn, to exchange, to give one thing in place of another), accurately captures the conceptual core: substitution and delegation.
What Burrill does not fully develop is the professional evolution — the transition from atturnatus as a general term for any authorized agent to the emergence of a distinct class of professional court attorneys. That evolution is more visible in institutional histories of the English legal profession than in dictionary sources, and researchers needing that arc should look beyond the dictionary corpus.
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Jurisdictional Note
Atturnatus as a live term in primary sources is essentially confined to English legal records and the English common law tradition. Researchers working in continental civil law sources will encounter procurator as the dominant equivalent. Scottish records may preserve related Latin forms but within a distinct legal tradition.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See ATTORNEY for the full development of the professional role that atturnatus prefigures.
See AGENCY for the substantive legal relationship — delegation of authority from principal to agent — that atturnatus instantiated.
See ATTORNMENT for the related but distinct feudal doctrine sharing the same etymological root.
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