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[001] indeterminate time, without any specific limitation of time, that is, until something
[002] be done or not done, as where it is said, ‘I give to such a one until I shall provide for
[003] him.’1 That which one holds for a certain number of years, months, or days, though
[004] for a term of a hundred years, which exceeds the lives of men,2 cannot be called anyone's
[005] free tenement. Nor can that which one holds at the will of his lords by license,
[006] which may be revoked in season and out,3 as from year to year or from day to day.3
[007] A free tenement is so called to distinguish it from a villeinage, for some tenements are
[008] free, some are villeinages.4 Some free tenements are held freely for homage and military
[009] service, some in free socage with fealty only, or according to some, with homage
[010] and fealty.5 Some are held in free and perpetual alms, others in pure, free and perpetual
[011] alms,6 which are reckoned both among the possessions of men and those of
[012] God, because they are given not only to God and to such a church, but to the abbots
[013] and priors there serving God,7 8<Of tenements given in free alms to the rectors of
[014] churches, which are pure and free, that given to the church in the name of dower at the
[015] time of its dedication is more free and pure [than] that given after the dedication.>9
[016] Some free tenements are private, some common. Of those that are common, some are
[017] common with parceners, as among several who are, so to speak, a single heir, and
[018] some among neighbours, by reason of vicinage, as the divisions and boundaries of
[019] fields, which are common whether they are stones or stakes or banks placed at the
[020] boundaries of fields in order to make clear what ought to remain to each as his separate10
[021] free tenement, that each may know what is his and what another's.11 That which
[022] is placed to differentiate and mark the division between fields will not be private
[023] property but common, so that the whole will be the property of the one and the other
[024] in common, nothing the separate property of either, and thus the whole is the property
[025] of one and nothing is his property, but in different respects.12 Hence some say that if
[026] a bank is levelled by a neighbour or cut down in some way, or if boundary stones are
[027] removed or boundary trees cut down, that this is trespass rather than disseisin.13 [In
[028] truth an action may be brought for both, since disseisin includes both, disseisin of a
[029] free tenement and trespass.14 Trespass, however, does not include disseisin, but since
[030] disseisin includes both, the matter may be determined as a disseisin or a trespass:
[031] he who does a greater thing does a lesser, but not



Notes

1. Supra ii, 90, iii, 39-40, 50, 69, 125

2. Supra ii, 92, infra iv, 21

3. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Infra 131

5. Supra ii, 110, 226, 244, 248

6. Supra ii, 93

7. Supra ii, 52, infra 128, 331, iv, 175

8. Suprai, 398

9. Supra ii, 52, 59, iii, 40, infra iv, 266

10. ‘separatum’

11. Supra 31

12. Supra 31, 61, infra 129

13. Supra 40, infra 153

14. Infra 152


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