Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 4, Page 317

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Volume 4, Page 317

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[001] customs than with respect to tenements, as where services and customs, of which
[002] his father or other ancestor had an acquitance on the day he was alive and dead, are
[003] claimed from a minor; he will not answer the demandant until he is of age. Nor ought
[004] his estate to be changed, as where services and due customs are claimed from a minor
[005] [which] his father or other ancestor, in the year and on the day he was alive and dead,
[006] rendered to a chief lord other than him who now claims; the minor will not answer
[007] the demandant until he is of age, because he cannot withdraw from him to whom his
[008] ancestor made the payment until he is of age. Thus the estate of a minor may not be
[009] changed until he is of age, whether it is a tenement or a service or a liberty or whatever,
[010] provided the truth is established by an inquest, notwithstanding the charters
[011] or instruments of his ancestors to the contrary, since a minor cannot answer to
[012] charters while under age, as where a guardian in the name of a minor claims customs
[013] and services of which the minor's father or other ancestor died seised; though the
[014] tenant shows charters or other instruments [of the father] sufficient to prove that he
[015] ought to hold in another way and by other services, because of the ancestor's seisin¹
[016] judgment will be for the minor, because he cannot answer to the charters, [with this
[017] protestation, that the tenant's² right be saved him when [the minor] comes of age.]³
[018] Conversely, if a minor claims services and customs that are not due and his tenants
[019] allege their acquitance, that on the year and day etc., they will not answer before the
[020] minor's full age. And so if the chief lord of a minor claims services and customs⁴
[021] which are not due from the minor. And so where the father or other ancestor of a
[022] minor has acquitted one of his tenants of a service as against superior chief lords on
[023] the day and year etc.; the minor will acquit him without argument to the contrary.
[024] Which may also be said of one who has given land to a religious house in free, pure
[025] and perpetual alms: if the abbot or prior is distrained for forinsec service or some
[026] other, if on the year and day on which the donor, the minor's ancestor, died he was in
[027] seisin of the acquitance, the minor's ancestor having acquitted him, the heir, though
[028] a minor, will acquit him, as [in the roll] of Michaelmas term in the ninth and the
[029] beginning of the tenth years of king Henry in the county of Kent, [the case] of the
[030] prior of Merton and Neal de Moubray.⁵ And so though the ancestor⁶ has neither paid
[031] nor acquitted,

Notes

1. ‘propter seisinam’

2. ‘tenentis’

3. ‘cum tali . . . pervenerit,’ from lines 11-12

4. ‘consuetudines’

5. C.R.R., xii, no. 820 (sidelined); not in B.N.B.

6. ‘antecessor,’ the abbot's warrantor