a. [See next and -ORIAL.]
1. Pertaining to, connected with, involving or implying, official visitation: a. Of power, authority, etc.
1688. N. Johnston (title), The King’s Visitatorial Power asserted. Being an impartial relation of the late visitation of St. Mary Magdalen College in Oxford.
1711. Bentley, Corr. (1842), I. 417. The Crown has, for a century and half, been in sole possession of the Visitatorial power.
1705. Blackstone, Comm., I. 470. In one of our colleges, (wherein the bishop of that diocese … has immemorially exercised visitatorial authority).
1770. (title) The Conduct of … the Lord Bishop of Winchester … with brief Observations on visitatorial Power.
1834. Edin. Rev., LVIII. 476. Deriving the visitatorial power from the property of the donor.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., vi. II. 90. The enactment which annexed to the crown an almost boundless visitatorial authority over the Church.
1874. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. xiii. 596. The visitatorial jurisdiction by which the first … regulated, and remodelled the second.
b. With other sbs.
1771. Gentl. Mag., XLI. 19. When I wrote my remarks upon the defence of the visitatorial decision I was ignorant of the Presidents of Magdalene College being favoured with the indulgence you mention.
1868. J. H. Blunt. Ref. Ch. Eng., I. 53. The Pope … left the visitatorial question undecided.
1884. Manch. Exam., 16 May, 4/7. In his visitatorial address to the churchwardens … Mr. Chancellor Christie went a little out of his way.
1890. Sir G. F. Duckett, Visit. Eng. Cluniac Found., 5. Formulæ for visitatorial duties.
2. Having the power of visitation; exercising authority of this kind.
1880. Daily News, 10 Nov., 5/3. He [a professor at Oxford] may be brought before a Visitatorial Board, admonished, fined, and deprived.
1881. Nature, XXIII. 471. Leave of absence granted by visitatorial boards.
