such as a freeholder. In such a case, the use of quitclaim circumvented the multistep process of the tenant having to formally give up possession to the original freeholder, merely in order to be re-granted possession by feoffment as freeholder in their own right.

Quitclaim may originally have been an oral transaction, but by the thirteenth century a formal sealed document or court record had become necessary. A famous early example is the Quitclaim of Canterbury