Definition
The person to whom a surrender is made. In the context of copyhold tenure and early property law, a surrenderee is the party who receives the relinquishment of an estate or interest from the surrenderor, typically before a lord of the manor or other competent authority.
Why It Matters in Research
SURRENDEREE is a term rooted in the now-obsolete English system of copyhold tenure, where land transfers were accomplished not by deed but by formal surrender to the lord of the manor and subsequent admittance of the new holder. Researchers encountering this term in historical property records, English chancery materials, or early American land documents should understand that the mechanism it describes — surrender and admittance — has no functional equivalent in modern conveyancing. The term does not appear in contemporary American property statutes or case law in its traditional sense.
The Burrill entry is notable for appending a definition of "survivor" immediately after the surrenderee entry, a likely typographical artifact of the source compilation. Researchers using Burrill should not conflate these definitions. The reference to 2 Bl. Com. 183–184 in Burrill pertains to survivorship among joint tenants, not to the surrenderee concept itself.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry similarly shows evidence of typographic bleed-through from adjacent entries (SURVIVE, SURVIVING), which can mislead researchers scanning historical digests. The core definition — the person to whom a surrender is made — is consistent across all sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
All five historical dictionaries agree precisely on the core definition: SURRENDEREE is the party receiving a surrender. The agreement is near-verbatim across Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, Burrill's, and Webster's 1913, which itself cites Mozley & Whiteley's Law Dictionary as its source. This unanimity reflects the term's narrow, technical function — it carried no contested meaning and required no expansion because the underlying doctrine of copyhold surrender was itself well-settled.
What the historical sources collectively omit is any sustained treatment of what distinguished a valid surrenderee from an invalid one, or how disputes over the identity of the surrenderee were resolved when surrender was made to the wrong party or before an incompetent authority. Researchers needing that level of doctrine will need to consult English chancery treatises and manorial law sources beyond the standard dictionary shelf.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is primarily English in origin and application. In early American jurisdictions that inherited English land law, surrender-based conveyancing appeared briefly before statutory deed systems displaced it. Modern American property law does not use this term in its traditional sense, though the word "surrender" persists in landlord-tenant law with a different meaning.