Definition
A regrant occurs when property that was previously granted by a person returns to that person — through escheat, forfeiture, or similar operation — and is then granted out again by that same grantor. The term describes the second (or subsequent) act of conveyance, not merely a re-execution of the original grant. The property must have reverted or fallen back to the grantor before the new grant issues; without that intermediate return, the transaction is simply a new grant or an amended one.
The term appears almost exclusively in the context of English copyhold tenure, where the lord of the manor held ongoing interests in land held by copyholders, and where forfeiture for breach of custom or failure of heirs could return the copyhold to the lord for regranting to a new tenant.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To grant something again or in a different way.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To grant back; to grant again or anew.
The common usage captures the surface mechanics but misses the legal significance. In law, a regrant is not simply any second grant of the same thing — it presupposes a specific sequence: original grant, return of the property to the grantor by operation of law, then a new grant. The intermediate reversion is what makes it a regrant rather than a reassignment or new conveyance.
Why It Matters in Research
Regrant is a term of art embedded in the now-obsolete system of copyhold tenure, which was not formally abolished in England until the Law of Property Act 1922 and its successor legislation. Researchers encountering the term in historical English sources — particularly manorial court rolls, conveyancing treatises, or equity proceedings involving copyholds — should recognize that it carries a precise procedural implication: the lord's act of regranting signals that the land passed through the lord's hand, however briefly, before going to the new tenant. This matters for questions of chain of title, encumbrances, and whether conditions attached to the original grant survived the return and regrant cycle.
In American legal sources, the term appears rarely and primarily in historical property scholarship or in cases tracing title to colonial-era land grants where similar mechanics applied under crown or proprietary grants. Researchers working with early American land records, particularly in states carved from territories originally under royal or proprietorial grant systems, may find regrant language in founding-era deeds and patents. The term does not carry a standardized American legal meaning and should not be read as a term of art when encountered in modern American conveyancing.
A practical trap: historical sources sometimes use "regrant" loosely to mean any renewed or confirmed grant, without implying the strict return-and-reissue sequence. Treatise writers and court records are not always consistent. When precision matters — for example, in analyzing whether intervening encumbrances or conditions were extinguished by the return to the lord — researchers should examine the underlying transaction rather than relying on the label alone.
Both editions of Black's are identical on this term, suggesting no meaningful evolution of the definition between editions. The definition has not been updated to reflect post-1922 developments because the term effectively became a historical artifact once copyhold tenure was abolished.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) provide identical, brief definitions, situating regrant firmly within English real property law and specifically the law of copyholds. Both editions give escheat and forfeiture as the paradigmatic mechanisms by which property returns to the grantor before regranting. The definitions are accurate as far as they go but offer little analytical depth — they do not address the legal consequences of a regrant (such as whether prior encumbrances survive), nor do they engage with the question of constructive regranting in equity.
Webster's 1913 traces the common usage to Ayliffe, a reference likely to John Ayliffe's early eighteenth-century civil law writings, which suggests the term had some currency in civil law and ecclesiastical contexts as well, though the legal dictionary tradition confined it to copyhold.
No significant divergence exists between the two Black's editions. The stability of the definition reflects the term's narrow, historically bounded scope rather than any ongoing doctrinal development.
Jurisdictional Note
Regrant as a formal legal concept is specific to English land law under the copyhold system. It has no direct equivalent in American property law, though analogous mechanics appear in the context of forfeited grants and re-patents in public land law. Researchers working outside England and pre-1922 English legal history should treat the term as historical rather than operative.