Although it may be doubted whether the mention of assigns was
ever necessary to attach an easement to land, and although it is
very certain that it did not remain so long, the difficulty
referred to grew greater as time went on. It would have been
easily disposed of if the only rights which could be annexed to
land were easements, such as a right of way. It then might have
been said that these were certain limited interests in land, less
than ownership in extent, but like it in kind, and therefore
properly transferred by the same means that ownership was. A
right of way, it might have been argued, is not to be approached
from the point of view of contract. It does not presuppose any
promise on the part of the servient owner. His obligation,
although more troublesome to him than to others, is the same as
that of every one else. It is the purely negative duty not to
obstruct or interfere with a right of property. /2/
[388] But although the test of rights going with the land may
have been something of that nature, this will not help us to
understand the cases without a good deal of explanation. For such
rights might exist to active services which had to be performed
by the person who held the servient estate. It strikes our ear
strangely to hear a right to services from an individual called a
right of property as distinguished from contract. Still this will
be found to have been the way in which such rights were regarded.
Bracton argues that it is no wrong to the lord for the tenant to
alienate land held by free and perfect gift, on the ground that
the land is bound and charged with the services into whose hands
soever it may come. The lord is said to have a fee in the homage
and services; and therefore no entry upon the land which does not
disturb them injures him. /1/ It is the tenement which imposes
the obligation of homage, /2/ and the same thing is true of
villein and other feudal services. /3/
The law remained unchanged when feudal services took the form of
rent. /4/ Even in our modern terms for years rent is still
treated as something issuing out of the leased premises, so that
to this day, although, if you hire a whole house and it burns
down, you have to pay without abatement, because you have the
land out of which the rent issues, yet if you only hire a suite
of rooms and they are burned, you pay rent no longer, because you
no longer have the tenement out of which it comes. /5/
[389] It is obvious that the foregoing reasoning leads to the
conclusion that a disseisor of the tenant would be bound as much
as the tenant himself, and this conclusion was adopted by the
early law. The lord could require the services, /1/ or collect
the rent /2/ of any one who had the land, because, as was said in
language very like Bracton's, "the charge of the rent goes with
the land." /3/
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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