having a right that he had the contractual remedies for it. /3/
Covenant required a specialty, but prescription was said to be a
sufficiently good specialty. /4/ Where, then, was the line to be
drawn between covenants that devolved only to successors, and
those that went with the land?
The difficulty becomes more striking upon further examination of
the early law. For side by side with the personal warranty which
has been discussed hitherto, there was another warranty which has
not yet been mentioned [395] by which particular land alone was
bound. /1/ The personal warranty bound only the warrantor and his
heirs. As was said in a case of the time of Edward I., "no one
can bind assigns to warranty, since warranty always extends to
heirs who claim by succession and not by assignment." /2/ But
when particular land was bound, the warranty went with it, even
into the hands of the King, because, as Bracton says, the thing
goes with its burden to every one. /3/ Fleta writes that every
possessor will be held. /4/ There cannot be a doubt that a
disseisor would have been bound equally with one whose possession
was lawful.
We are now ready for a case /5/ decided under Edward III., which
has been discussed from the time of Fitzherbert and Coke down to
Lord St. Leonards and Mr. Rawle, which is still law, and is said
to remain still unexplained. /6/ It shows the judges hesitating
between the two conceptions to which this Lecture has been
devoted. If they are understood, I think the explanation will be
clear.
Pakenham brought covenant as heir of the covenantee against a
prior, for breach of a covenant made by the defendant's
predecessor with the plaintiff's great-grandfather, that the
prior and convent should sing every week in a chapel in his
manor, for him and his servants. The defendant first pleaded that
the plaintiff and his servants were not dwelling within the
manor; but, not daring to [396] rest his case on that, he pleaded
that the plaintiff was not heir, but that his elder brother was.
The plaintiff replied that he was tenant of the manor, and that
his great-grandfather enfeoffed a stranger, who enfeoffed the
plaintiff and his wife; and that thus the plaintiff was tenant of
the manor by purchase, and privy to the ancestor; and also that
the services had been rendered for a time whereof the memory was
not.
It is evident from these pleadings that assigns were not
mentioned in the covenant, and so it has always been taken. /1/
It also appears that the plaintiff was trying to stand on two
grounds; first, privity, as descendant and assign of the
covenantee; second, that the service was attached to the manor by
covenant or by prescription, and that he could maintain covenant
as tenant of the manor, from whichever source the duty arose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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