Quicquid plantatur solo solo cedit (Went. Off. Ex. 14 ed. 145). Whatever is affixed to the soil belongs to the soil. It is a general and a very ancient rule of law that whatever is affixed to the soil becomes, in contemplation of law, a part of the soil, and is consequently subject to the same rights of property as the soil itself. The ancient common law, regarding land as of far more consequence than any chattel which could be fixed to it, always considered everything attached to the land as part of the land (4 Rep. 64a; Lord Raymond, 738; Mackintosh v. Trotter, 3 Mee & Wel. 184, 186). Hence it follows that houses themselves, which consist of an aggregate of chattels personal (namely, timber, bricks, &c.) fixed to the land, were regarded as land and passed by a conveyance of the land without express mention; and this is the law at the present time. So if a man eject another from land and afterwards build upon it, the building belongs to the owner of the ground on which it is built, according to the principle Ædificatum solo solo cedit. But where a man, supposing that he has a good title to an estate, builds upon the land with the knowledge of the real owner, who allows the erections to be made, without giving any notice of his claim, the Court of Chancery will compel him, in a suit brought for the recovery of the land, to make due allowance and compensation for such improvements. Ford evidently refers to this maxim, and Falstaff probably intends this much to be understood, that he committed as great a mistake, by building upon a foolish woman’s promise, as they make who build upon another man’s ground. Shakespeare does not in either of these passages, as Lord Campbell supposed, refer to Cujus est solum ejus est usque ad cœlum, which expresses the extent of the rights of the owner of land, but he refers to the maxim Ædificatum solo solo cedit, which expresses the action of building on another man’s land and the legal consequence of doing so. When Shakespeare quotes a legal maxim he generally gives the words of the maxim and the law which it describes. So Ford makes use of the verb ‘build’ and the noun ‘edifice’ which words are exact translations of ædifico and ædificium. George Chapman, in ‘May Day,’ makes a humorous application of Ædificium cedit solo. Ædificatum solo solo cedit, and Quicquid plantatur solo solo cedit, have their origin in Justinian’s Institutes. _Angelo._ The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept. _Measure for Measure_, Act ii. Scene 3.