Definition
A doctrine of Scots law in which a grantor conveying heritable property or another right undertakes an obligation to ensure that the right conveyed will be effectual to the receiver — that is, the grantor binds themselves to uphold the title against any challenge, claim, or encumbrance arising from circumstances prior to the conveyance. The closest functional equivalent in English and American law is warranty of title, but warrandice is a distinct legal institution with its own taxonomy, remedies, and historical development within the Scots legal tradition. In its fullest form, warrandice against all mortals (warrantia contra omnes mortales) obligates the granter to defend the grantee's title against every person in the world.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A form of warranty in which a person conveying property is held liable for any outstanding claims on the property.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The obligation by which a person conveying a subject or a right is bound to uphold that subject or right against every claim, challenge, or burden arising from circumstances prior to the conveyance; warranty. Also written warrandise.
The common and legal meanings align more closely here than for most terms, because warrandice is a specialized legal concept with no independent life in ordinary language. The Wiktionary definition is accurate but flattens the term's doctrinal structure. The legal significance lies not merely in liability for outstanding claims, but in the graded nature of the obligation — ranging from simple warrandice (covering only the granter's own acts) up to absolute warrandice — and in the Scots law remedies attached to breach, which differ meaningfully from common-law warranty actions.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Scots law recognized at least three principal grades of warrandice, reflecting the extent of the granter's undertaking:
Absolute warrandice (warrantia contra omnes mortales): The granter undertakes to defend the grantee's title against all persons and all causes whatsoever. This is the fullest form, implied in onerous conveyances for value.
Personal warrandice: The granter obliges themselves only against their own acts and those of persons claiming through them, not against the acts of third parties or prior holders. Common in gratuitous grants.
Simple or fact-and-deed warrandice: The narrowest form, covering only the granter's own future acts and deeds that might disturb the grantee's title.
Burrill's dictionary also references warrandice against all incumbrances as a discrete formulation.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research trap is conflating warrandice with common-law warranty of title. The terms perform analogous functions but belong to different legal systems, carry different doctrinal structures, and appear in different source bodies. A researcher working in early Scottish land records, colonial-era transactions touching Scottish practice, or comparative property law must resist treating them as interchangeable.
Warrandice will appear in Scots law sources — institutional writers such as Erskine and Forbes, Scottish case law, and charter documents — rather than in English equity or common law reports. The term does not migrate into American legal materials in any operative sense; references to it in American dictionaries (Bouvier, Black's) function as glosses for researchers encountering the word in Scottish sources, not as living doctrine.
The graded structure of warrandice (absolute, personal, simple) is essential to interpreting specific historical instruments. A deed containing warrandice language must be read for which grade applies, because the granter's exposure differs substantially. Historical dictionaries reproduce this structure with varying completeness; researchers relying on a single dictionary entry may miss the functional distinctions.
The spelling variation — warrandice, warrandise — appears in historical sources and must be accounted for in full-text corpus searches. Webster's 1913 explicitly flags this, and index-based searches that do not account for both forms will produce incomplete results.
Researchers approaching Scots institutional law should note that warrandice is treated systematically in Erskine's Institutes (Book 2, Title 3) and in Forbes's Institutes — the sources cited by Burrill and Bouvier — which remain authoritative reference points for understanding the doctrine in its classical form.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree on the core definition: warrandice is a clause in a charter or deed by which the granter obliges themselves to make good the conveyed right to the receiver. Burrill provides the most substantive treatment, appearing twice with complementary formulations — one focused on the obligation against all incumbrances, the other giving the fuller textual explanation drawn from Erskine and Forbes. Bouvier similarly grounds the term in Erskine's Institutes and correctly identifies the personal/real distinction, though without elaborating it.
Rapalje & Lawrence give the unhelpfully compressed entry "warranty," which is accurate but practically useless for research purposes. The Black's first edition entry is fragmentary in the supplied source material, and the second edition source material for this term is clearly a transcription error (the text reproduced is the entry for warehouse receipt, not warrandice). Researchers should treat those Black's entries as unreliable for this particular term and rely on Burrill and Bouvier instead.
None of the historical dictionaries fully explains the graded structure of the obligation — the distinction between absolute, personal, and simple warrandice — which is essential doctrinal knowledge. For that, the institutional writers (Erskine, Stair, Forbes) are indispensable complements to the dictionary sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Warrandice is a doctrine of Scots law and has no operative application in English or American jurisdictions. It appears in common-law research tools (Bouvier, Black's, Burrill) solely as a reference gloss for researchers encountering the term in Scottish legal sources. Researchers working in jurisdictions following English common law should look instead to covenant of warranty and warranty deed doctrines, which serve parallel but distinct functions.