Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen ElizabethReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen Elizabeth
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Former judge Sir Thomas Littleton wrote a legal textbook
describing tenancies in dower; the tenures of socage, knight's
service, serjeanty, and burgage; estates in fee simple, fee
tail, and fee conditional. For instance, "Also, if feoffment be
made upon such condition, that if the feoffor pay to the feofee
at a certain day, etc., 800s. forty pounds of money, that then
the feoffor may re-enter, etc., in this case the feoffee is
called tenant in mortgage, ... and if he doth not pay, then the
land which he puts in pledge upon condition for the payment of
the money is gone from him for ever, and so dead as to the
tenant, etc."
Joint tenants are distinguished from tenants in common by
Littleton thus: "Joint-tenants are, as if a man be seised of
certain lands or tenements, etc., and thereof enfeoffeth two, or
three, or four, or more, to have and to hold to them (and to
their heirs, or letteth to them) for term of their lives, or for
term of another's life; by force of which feoffment or lease they
are seised, such are joint-tenants. ... And it is to be
understood, that the nature of joint-tenancy is, that he that
surviveth shall have solely the entire tenancy, according to
such estate as he hath, ..." "Tenants in common are they that
have lands or tenements in fee-simple, fee-tail, or for term of
life, etc., the which have such lands and tenements by several
title, and not by joint title, and neither of them knoweth
thereof his severalty, but they ought by the law to occupy such
lands or tenements in common pro indiviso, to take the profits in
common. ...As if a man enfeoff two joint-tenants in fee, and the
one of them alien that which to him belongeth to another in fee,
now the other joint-tenant and the alienee are tenants in
common, because they are in such tenements by several titles,
..."
Judicial Procedure
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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