solicitant

noun

1. One who solicits.

   “The ante-chambers of the President are daily thronged with solicitants—with men who think they helped to make the President, and who are consequently of opinion that the President should help to make them.”

   “The communication between the medium and the human solicitants, described by both the medium and Pu, was conducted through informal yet polite conversation.”

   “In 1592, the papacy assigned the Inquisition jurisdiction over solicitation among the clergy; it thus enabled the Holy Office to pursue solicitation and solicitants in the peninsula and the oversea dominions.”

   “But delicate as it was, it was this connection between solicitants and a bundle of papers somewhere in the IBR system that made landownership official.”

   “Solicitants for office besiege him, and he of course finds his hands full for the present.”

2. (historical)A priest who abused the confessional to solicit women.

   “How like to the conduct of a Titular Bishop of Derry, who, when a Priest was accused of the crime of "solicitant at confession," expressed his abhorrence of the offence, and punished the offender by removing him to a better parish!”

   “Solicitant, one who, abusing the privacy of the confessional, tempts women to a violation of chastity.”

   “That the Confessional has been grossly used for immoral purposes, by evil-disposed priests, and that to a gigantic extent in the Church of Rom, is amply proved, beyond the possibility of refutation, by the Bulls of the Popes themselves against solicitant priests.”