Definition
An archaic Law French term for a warrantor — a person called upon to fulfill a warranty obligation, typically in the context of land title. In medieval English property law, when a grantee of land was challenged by a third party claiming superior title (a process known as vouching to warranty), the original grantor could be called into the action to defend the title or, if defense failed, to provide the grantee with lands of equal value in substitution. That called party was the garrantor.
The term is effectively the Law French equivalent of the Latin-derived "warrantor" and the modern English "guarantor" in its real property sense, though each of these carries distinct technical weight in its own era and context.
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Common Confusion
GARRANTOR, WARRANTOR, and GUARANTOR are related but not interchangeable. Garrantor is the specifically medieval, Law French form tied to the old common law action of vouching to warranty in real property. Warrantor survives into modern usage but is broader, applying to warranties in both property and commercial contexts. Guarantor is the modern term of choice for a person who undertakes secondary liability for another's debt or obligation, particularly in contract and finance. A researcher encountering "garrantor" in a historical source should resist mapping it directly onto the modern guarantor relationship, which operates under different mechanics.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources — Year Books, early plea rolls, medieval statutes, and treatises from the era of the old real actions. The Statute of Gloucester (6 Edw. I, c. 12), cited by Burrill, is the anchor reference; researchers encountering garrantor in a historical source should consult that statute and its surrounding commentary for procedural context.
The practical trap: researchers working in early English property records or reading abridgments of the old real actions may encounter garrantor in abbreviated or corrupted form. Spelman's Glossary (referenced in Burrill's truncated entry) and similar Law French glossaries are the appropriate secondary tools for disambiguation. Blount's Nomo-Lexicon and Cowell's Interpreter also treat the warranty family of terms and may provide surrounding context that Burrill's clipped entry does not.
Because the old real actions — including the process of vouching to warranty that gave garrantor its procedural meaning — were largely abolished in England by the early nineteenth century and never fully transplanted into American practice, this term has no living jurisdictional application. Its research value is purely historical and interpretive: understanding it is necessary for reading medieval conveyancing records, early English case law, and the scholarship that traces how warranty obligations evolved into modern title covenants and surety relationships.
Researchers working on the genealogy of title warranty, covenant of warranty in deeds, or the history of surety law will find garrantor a useful entry point into the older procedural literature, but should trace the concept forward through warrantor and ultimately into modern covenant of seisin and covenant of warranty doctrine before drawing conclusions about continuity.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is notably truncated — the surviving text reads only as far as a reference to Stat. Gloc. c. 12 and a partial citation to Spelman ("old Spel-"), suggesting the entry was cut off in the source scan or edition. This limits what can be confirmed from Burrill alone.
What the entry does establish: garrantor is Law French, it denotes a warrantor, and its primary statutory anchor is the Statute of Gloucester. This aligns with what broader historical legal scholarship confirms about the term. The Statute of Gloucester formalized aspects of the warranty procedure, including the rights and obligations of the party vouched — the garrantor — when called to defend title.
No other source dictionaries were provided for this entry. Researchers requiring deeper historical treatment should consult Spelman's Glossary (Henrici Spelmanni Glossarium), Cowell's Interpreter, and the relevant sections of Bracton's De Legibus, all of which address warranty in real property actions with more completeness than Burrill's partial entry provides here.
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Jurisdictional Note
Garrantor as a term of art has no current jurisdictional application in any common law jurisdiction. It belongs entirely to the historical stratum of English real property law predating the abolition of the old real actions. American courts and statutes have never adopted it.
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