Definition
In old English law, a warrantor of land. A garauntor was a person bound by a warranty of title — called a garauntie — to defend the seisin and title of the party to whom land had been transferred (the garaunte, or warrantee). If the garauntor failed to defend that title and the tenant was evicted or dispossessed, the garauntor was obligated to provide the dispossessed party with other lands of equal value in substitution. The garauntor was also referred to as a vouchee — that is, a person vouched to warranty, called into court to defend the title they had warranted.
The term is Anglo-Norman French (Law French), and belongs to a cluster of related old English law terms: garauntie (the warranty itself), garaunter (to warrant or defend title), and garaunte (the warrantee, the person whose title is warranted).
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Common Confusion
GARAUNTOR and VOUCHEE are used interchangeably in the historical sources, but they emphasize different procedural moments. Garauntor describes the substantive role — the person who gave the warranty and bears the obligation to defend title. Vouchee describes the procedural role — the same person after being called (vouched) into court to honor that obligation. Researchers will encounter both terms in the same context referring to the same party.
GARAUNTOR should not be confused with GUARANTOR, the modern term for a person who guarantees the debt or obligation of another. The two words share a common etymological root in the Old French and Germanic concept of warranting or securing, but garauntor is specific to medieval land law and the warranty of seisin, while guarantor belongs to contract and suretyship law. The concepts are historically related but functionally distinct.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of pure historical significance. Garauntor does not appear in modern American or English legal usage and is not operative in any current legal doctrine. Researchers will encounter it only in sources dealing with medieval English land tenure, common recovery proceedings, and the old common law action of warranty.
The vouching-to-warranty procedure — in which a tenant threatened with eviction could vouch in the garauntor to defend the title — was a mechanism with significant practical consequences in medieval land law, including the fictitious common recovery used to bar entails. Researchers working on the history of fee tail, real actions, or the development of common recoveries will need to recognize garauntor as a technical term within that procedural machinery.
In the historical corpus, garauntor, garauntie, garaunter, and garaunte appear as a tight cluster. Encountering one term without understanding the others will leave the procedural picture incomplete. The garaunte (warrantee) is the protected party; the garauntor (warrantor/vouchee) is the obligated party; garauntie is the warranty instrument or obligation; garaunter is the verb form. Burrill's entry is the only source that explicitly defines garaunte alongside garauntor, making it a necessary companion for researchers who encounter both forms.
Historical sources uniformly cite Britton, chapter 75 (and in Burrill, chapter 24) as the authority. Researchers should be aware that the chapter reference varies slightly between sources — this likely reflects different editions of Britton rather than error.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition. All five sources identify the garauntor as a warrantor of land and a vouchee, and all describe the core obligation: defend the title and seisin of the alienee, or on failure to do so, substitute lands of equal value. Bouvier's provides the most complete account, explicitly naming the related terms (garauntie, garaunter, garaunte) and describing the full triangular relationship between warrantor, warranty, and warrantee. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence are briefer but consistent.
Burrill's is notable for distinguishing the two roles in one entry: garauntor as warrantor/vouchee, and garaunte as the warrantee — the person on the receiving end of the warranty. No other source makes this distinction as clearly within a single entry.
None of the historical sources connect garauntor explicitly to the broader procedural mechanism of common recovery or to the action of warranty as a real action, which limits their utility for researchers who need that doctrinal context. Supplementing these dictionary entries with treatise sources on medieval real property law is advisable.
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Jurisdictional Note
Garauntor is a term of old English law with no operative role in any modern common law jurisdiction. It belongs to the pre-modern law of real property and real actions, which were largely abolished in England by the early nineteenth century and were never fully transplanted to American law.
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