Definition
An archaic legal term designating a person who supports, encourages, or assists another in wrongdoing. In old English law, a fautor was one who favored or backed another party — most specifically, one who encouraged resistance to the execution of legal process. In Spanish law, the term carried the more precise meaning of an accomplice: a person who aids or assists another in the commission of a crime.
The term appears in two distinct legal traditions carried into English legal literature:
1. Old English law: A fautor was a supporter or partisan — someone who lent countenance or backing to another's unlawful conduct, particularly obstruction of legal process. The concept overlaps with abettor but carries the additional connotation of general patronage or encouragement rather than direct participation.
2. Spanish law (as received into American legal sources): A fautor is an accomplice — closer in meaning to a formal accessory than a mere sympathizer.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Patron, protector; admirer or one who favors; supporter, adherent, partisan.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A favorer; a patron; one who gives countenance or support; an abettor." Marked as obsolete.
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow but consequential. In ordinary historical English, a fautor could be an entirely benign patron or admirer — Latimer used it to describe supporters of the king's proceedings. In legal usage, the term shades toward culpability: a fautor is not merely a supporter but one whose support assists or enables wrongdoing. The Spanish-law usage goes further still, treating the fautor as a formal criminal participant. Researchers should not assume that historical appearances of the word in non-legal texts carry any implication of criminal association.
Common Confusion
Fautor is frequently listed alongside abettor, accessory, and accomplice in historical dictionaries, but these terms are not interchangeable. An abettor typically implies active instigation or encouragement of a specific act. An accessory involves a more structured legal relationship — before or after the fact — with defined criminal liability. Fautor, especially in old English usage, could describe something looser: general partisan support or the act of emboldening resistance to process, without necessarily establishing the formal elements of accessorial liability. In Spanish-law usage, the overlap with accomplice is closer, but fautor still appears as a descriptor rather than a term of art carrying specific statutory consequences.
Why It Matters in Research
Fautor is an obsolete term that surfaces almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources and in treatises transmitting Spanish or civil law concepts into American legal literature. Researchers encounter it primarily in three contexts:
First, in medieval and early modern English statutes and their commentaries. The Statute of Westminster II (1285), chapter 39, uses the concept explicitly in relation to obstruction of process — Burrill's citation to this statute is the most precise anchor for the term's technical English-law meaning.
Second, in Bouvier's and the second edition of Black's, which reflect the reception of Spanish civil law terminology into American legal dictionaries — particularly relevant for research touching Louisiana, Texas, California, and other jurisdictions with Spanish-law heritage. In that tradition, fautor functions as an analytic category in criminal law closer to complicity doctrine.
Third, as background noise in historical texts: the word appears in theological, political, and literary writing of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries without legal significance. Researchers working with digitized early modern sources should not mistake these appearances for legal usage.
The term has no modern statutory or case-law life. If it appears in a legal document after the eighteenth century, it is almost certainly a learned or antiquarian usage, or a direct quotation from an older source.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries substantially agree on the old-English-law meaning — a favorer or supporter of others, an abettor — and all trace the term to Cowell and Jacob, the standard early reference points for obsolete English legal vocabulary. Burrill adds the most useful precision by tying the term to Statute of Westminster II and specifying that the offense was encouraging resistance to process execution, not merely generic support for wrongdoing.
Bouvier stands apart in emphasizing the Spanish-law meaning — accomplice — without fully reconciling it with the English usage. Black's second edition is the only source that presents both traditions side by side, making it the most complete single reference for this term. None of the historical dictionaries address the civil-law genealogy of the word in depth, and none flag the risk of conflation with the ordinary English meaning of patron or admirer.
What the historical sources miss: none of them address how fautor functioned procedurally — that is, what legal consequences attached to being identified as one. The statutory reference in Burrill points toward liability for obstruction of process, but the dictionaries do not trace how this was enforced or what penalties applied. Researchers needing that level of detail must go to the statute itself and its medieval commentators.
Jurisdictional Note
In American legal research, the Spanish-law meaning is most likely to appear in sources connected to civil-law jurisdictions — Louisiana in particular, and to a lesser extent the southwestern states whose legal heritage includes Spanish colonial law. The English-law meaning is relevant primarily to research in English legal history and has no direct American common-law descendant.