Definition
A resurrender is the act by which a copyhold mortgagee, having been formally admitted as tenant by the lord of the manor following the mortgagor's original surrender of the land as security, surrenders that copyhold interest back to the lord upon repayment of the mortgage debt — effectively reconveying the land to the mortgagor's use. The resurrender completed the cycle of the copyhold mortgage transaction: just as the initial pledge was accomplished not by deed but by surrender to the lord, the discharge of that pledge required the same manorial mechanism in reverse.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To surrender again.
Historical common usage: Not distinctly defined in Webster's 1913 beyond the obvious compound meaning — to yield up again what was previously yielded.
The ordinary sense captures the literal mechanics but misses the technical legal context entirely. In law, resurrender is not a general second act of yielding but a precise instrument within copyhold tenure, dependent on the lord of the manor's role as intermediary and on the formal customs of the manor. Without that context, the common meaning is nearly useless as a guide to the legal term's significance.
Why It Matters in Research
Resurrender belongs to the vocabulary of copyhold tenure, a system of landholding that was abolished in England by the Law of Property Act 1922. Researchers will encounter the term almost exclusively in historical English property records, conveyancing treatises, and equity proceedings predating that abolition. It does not appear in modern American property law in any operative sense, as copyhold tenure was never transplanted to the colonies in functional form.
The primary research trap is anachronism: resurrender is a dead-letter term in active legal practice, but it appears with some regularity in historical deed abstracts, manorial court rolls, and 18th- and 19th-century conveyancing guides. A researcher who encounters it in a historical document should not attempt to map it onto modern mortgage discharge or reconveyance concepts without accounting for the entirely different legal machinery it describes.
The cited treatise authority in both Black's editions — 2 Dav. Conv. 1332n — refers to Conveyancing by John Davies, a standard English conveyancing reference of its era. That citation anchors the term firmly in the English copyhold conveyancing tradition and signals that primary elaboration of the concept will be found in English equity and manorial law sources, not in American case law.
Researchers working on questions of historical title, chain of title in jurisdictions with English colonial backgrounds, or the history of mortgage law will find resurrender relevant as a contextual term even where it carries no operative weight.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both the first and second editions of Black's Law Dictionary give substantively identical definitions, quoting the same passage from 2 Dav. Conv. 1332n with only minor typographical differences. There is no meaningful divergence between the two editions on substance. Both editions treat resurrender as a term of art specific to copyhold mortgage practice, not as a general term for any second surrender.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply: any discussion of the equitable dimensions of the mortgagor's entitlement to compel a resurrender upon redemption, the procedural mechanics at the manorial court level, or what remedies existed if a mortgagee refused to resurrender after debt repayment. Researchers needing that depth must look to English equity reports and specialized copyhold treatises rather than the dictionary entries alone.
Jurisdictional Note
Resurrender is a term of English land law with no operative American counterpart. Copyhold tenure did not take root in American colonial property systems, so the term has no independent doctrinal life in U.S. jurisdiction. It may appear in historical contexts involving English-origin title chains in certain older Atlantic seaboard jurisdictions, but only as a historical artifact.