Definition
A perquisitor is a person who acquires an estate otherwise than by descent — that is, by purchase, gift, grant, or any other act or agreement rather than by inheritance from an ancestor. The term appears in old English property law to distinguish the original acquirer of an estate from those who later receive it by hereditary succession. The perquisitor is the one who first brings property into a family line; all subsequent heirs who take by descent are distinguished from this originating acquirer.
A secondary, narrower usage recorded in some sources means simply a searcher or investigator, but this sense has no significant footprint in English-language legal doctrine and appears to be a Latin borrowing carried over without independent development.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "The first purchaser of an estate."
Historical common usage: The term does not appear in Webster's 1913 as a general vocabulary word, reflecting that it never meaningfully entered ordinary English outside of legal and scholarly contexts.
Editorial note: The common usage tracked by Wiktionary collapses the legal meaning slightly. "Purchaser" in the legal sense used here is broader than the commercial transaction most modern readers assume — it includes gifts, grants, and any non-hereditary acquisition. A researcher relying on the plain sense of "purchaser" risks missing the full scope of the term as used in Blackstone and the historical treatise tradition.
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Common Confusion
Perquisitor is sometimes loosely equated with "purchaser" in the narrow commercial sense, but the historical legal usage is deliberately broader. In the classical English land law framework following Blackstone, "purchase" (perquisitio) encompassed any acquisition not by descent, including gift and grant. A researcher encountering perquisitor in a historical deed, treatise, or case must read it in this expanded sense, not as a reference to a buyer who paid money consideration. Separately, the Rapalje & Lawrence definition — "a searcher" — reflects a distinct Latin root usage and should not be read as an alternative meaning within English real property law. The two senses are functionally unrelated and appear in different legal contexts entirely.
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Why It Matters in Research
Perquisitor is a term you are far more likely to encounter in secondary literature and treatise commentary — particularly Blackstone's Commentaries — than in primary documents. When it does appear in historical deeds or conveyancing records, it signals the drafter's intent to establish that the grantee is taking as an original acquirer rather than as an heir, which has downstream consequences for questions of inheritance, entail, and future interest.
The key research trap is chronological and definitional: the broader meaning of "purchase" underlying perquisitor (any non-descent acquisition) was standard in English common law through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but has largely given way in modern usage to the narrow commercial meaning. Sources written after roughly the mid-twentieth century may use "purchaser" in the narrow sense while older sources using perquisitor or its cognates intend the broader one. Failing to track this shift can produce serious misreadings of historical estate documents and treatise arguments.
Corpus researchers should note that perquisitor itself is rare in case law — it functions primarily as a doctrinal label in treatise writing. If you are tracing a question about original acquisition versus descent in a historical property dispute, the more productive search terms in primary sources are likely "purchaser," "purchase" (in the Blackstonian sense), and "perquisitio." The term perquisitor is most useful as an interpretive key when encountered, not as a primary search term.
The secondary Rapalje & Lawrence sense ("searcher") has essentially no life in English legal sources and can be set aside for virtually all common law research purposes. It may be marginally relevant in certain civil law or ecclesiastical contexts, but even there the word rarely appears in English-language materials.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) are in complete agreement, reproducing the same definition verbatim with the citation to 2 Bl. Comm. 220. This consistency reflects that the term was not contested or evolving between editions — it was already archaic by the time Black's was compiled, and both editions simply preserve the Blackstonian usage as a reference point.
Rapalje & Lawrence's terse entry — "a searcher" — stands apart from the property law tradition entirely. It is not wrong, but it addresses a different application of the Latin root and is of limited utility for English real property research. Its brevity suggests the editors regarded the term as peripheral, which is accurate.
What the historical dictionaries collectively do not address is the doctrinal work the perquisitor concept performs: in the law of entail and fee tail, the question of whether property was originally acquired or descended bore on what the tenant in tail could do with it. The dictionaries preserve the label but do not illuminate its procedural and doctrinal stakes, which a researcher must pursue through Blackstone and the broader treatise literature directly.
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Jurisdictional Note
Perquisitor and the underlying doctrine are products of English common law. American property law inherited the distinction between acquisition by purchase and acquisition by descent, but the Latin label perquisitor did not travel robustly into American usage. Researchers working in American historical records will rarely encounter the word itself, though the underlying concept remains operative in U.S. estate law wherever questions of descent versus purchase arise.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Property Acquisition
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Fee Simple and Estates of Inheritance
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Descent and Distribution
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