respectively. Persons under the disability of infancy, lunacy, coverture, or beyond seas, and their representatives, are allowed a further period of ten years from the termination of their disability or death (b). But no distress or action can be made or brought beyond forty years after the right first accrued (c); and at the end of the period of limitation the right of the party out of possession is to be extinguished (d). A defendant in replevin avowed the taking of the goods for arrears of an ancient quit rent issuing out of a tenement held of him, as lord of a certain manor, by fealty and 9s. rent. The plaintiff pleaded (inter alia) non tenuit. The last payment was made on the 25th of January, 1825, for rent due on the 4th of October, 1824. The distress was made on the 13th of May, 1845: it was held that by the operation of the statute 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 27, ss. 2, 3, and 34, the rent was extinguished by the lapse of twenty years from the day on which the last payment was made, and that the Statute of Limitations need not be pleaded specially, but was available under the plea of non tenuit (e).

rent.

No arrears of rent, which word includes all services Arrears of and suits for which a distress may be made, or damages in respect of such arrears, can be recovered but within six years after the same shall become due, or next after an acknowledgment of the same in writing shall have been given to the person entitled thereto or his agent, signed by the person by whom the same was payable, or his agent, with an exception which need not here be stated (ƒ).

(b) 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 27, s. 16.

(c) Ibid. s. 17.

(d) Ibid. s. 34; see Shelford's Real Prop. Stat. pp. 106-221, 5th ed.

(e) De Beauvoir v. Owen,

Exch. 166; 19 L. J. Exch. 177

Exch. Cham. 16 Mees. & W. 547.

(f) 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 27, s. 42; see Shelford's Real Prop. Stat. 244, 5th ed.

The lord of a manor may now lose his rents altogether by not enforcing payment for twenty years.

2. Of Fealty.

Fealty signifies the oath taken on the admittance of every tenant, as well freeholder as copyholder, to be true to the lord of whom he holds, and fealty must be done by the tenant in person, for he cannot swear by attorney (g). Either the lord or the steward may administer the oath of fealty (h). This oath is now seldom administered, and the practice on the admittance of the tenant is to make an entry on the rolls that the fealty of the tenant is respited. As fealty is now only requisite for the preserving and evidencing the existence of the subsisting tenure, it has become usual to respite it on the admission of the copyholder, as his tenure is sufficiently evidenced without it by the regular inrolment of such admittance (i).

3. Of Suit of Court.

Every copyhold tenant is bound to attend the lord's courts and to perform the duties of homager, unless he make essoign, that is, justify his absence by reason of sickness or other sufficient cause, which may necessarily be done by attorney (k). If a copyholder do not appear on a personal summons, or be duly essoigned, he shall forfeit his copyhold (1). The lord may distrain his copyholder for non-performance of suit (m). So the copyholder may be amerced for not

(g) 9 Rep. 76; Co. Litt. 68.

(h) Co. Cop. s. 20.

(i) 1 Watk. Cop. 325, 4th ed.

(k) 2 Watk. Cop. 25, 135, 4th ed.

(2) 1 Watk. Cop. 396, 397; 2 Watk. Cop. 135, 4th ed.

(m) Tonkin v. Croker, 2 Ld. Raym. 860; Thornhagh v. Hartshorn, Bunb. 237.

performing suit (o), but such amercement must be affeered, i. e. audited on oath by the other copyholders (p). Tenants in common having several estates must of consequence do suit severally (q); but coparceners, when admitted as such, and joint tenants taking but one estate, shall do but one suit (»).

SECT. 5. OF ESCHEATS.

cheat affected

chisement.

By the 82nd section of the Copyhold Act, 1841, no Right of escommutation under that act shall operate to affect any by enfranrights of lords of manors to escheats. The lord's right to escheats is not reserved by the Copyhold Act, 1852; but by the 16th section of that act escheats are to be taken into account in making any valuation under it. The loss of the contingent benefit arising from an escheat seems hardly susceptible of any accurate valuation. It is to be observed that, independently of enfranchisement under those acts, the lord, on enfranchising a copyhold, cannot reserve a right of escheat (s). For a copyhold tenement, being part of the lord's demesne, is, when enfranchised, held of the superior lord of the fee, that is, of the same lord of whom the manor is held; and it ceases to be parcel of the manor, whereby the lord loses his right of escheat.

escheat.

Escheat, derived from the French word eschet or Origin of échet, is a technical term, signifying properly, when by accident the lands fall to the lord of whom they are holden (t). Escheat, being a consequence of tenure,

(0) Braunche's case, 1 Leon. 104.
(p) 2 Watk. Cop. 135, 4th ed.
(q) 6 Rep. 1 b.

(r) 2 Watk. Cop. 136, 4th ed.

(s) 1 Watk. Cop. 450, 4th ed.; 1 Scriv. Cop. 362-365, 4th ed. (t) Co. Litt. 13 a, 92 b.

is the determination of the tenure, or dissolution of the mutual bond between the lord and tenant, from the extinction of the blood of the latter by either natural or civil means; as if he died without heirs of his blood, or if his blood was corrupted and stained by commission of treason or felony, whereby formerly every inheritable quality was entirely blotted out and abolished, although now the descendants of persons attainted may inherit (u). In such cases the lands escheated, or fell back to the lord of the fee (x); that is, the tenure was determined by breach of the original condition expressed or implied in the feudal donation. In the one case, there were no heirs subsisting of the blood of the first feudatory or purchaser, to which heirs alone the grant of the feud extended; in the other, the tenant, by perpetrating an atrocious crime, showed that he was no longer to be trusted as a vassal, having forgotten his duty as a subject, and therefore forfeited his feud, which he held under the implied condition that he should not be a traitor or a felon. The consequence of which in both cases was, that the gift, being determined, the land resulted back to the lord who gave it (y). 'The law of escheat is founded upon this single principle, that the blood of the person last seised in fee simple, is, by some means or other, utterly extinct and gone; and since none can inherit his estate but such as are of his blood and consanguinity, it follows as a regular consequence, that when such blood is extinct, the inheritance itself must fail; the land must become what the feudal writers denominate feudum apertum, and must result back again to the lord

of the fee, by whom, or by those whose estate he hath, it was given (z).

escheat.

Escheats are commonly divided into those propter Causes of defectum sanguinis, and those propter delictum tenentis; the one sort, if the tenant die without heirs; the other, if his blood be attainted (a). The first may happen when the tenant dies without any relation on the part of any of his ancestors, or when he dies without any relations on the part of those ancestors from whom his estate descended; and as to descents, before the 1st of January, 1834, when he died without any relations of the whole blood, although after that period the half-blood are capable of inheriting (b).

of escheat.

Instances of the escheat of lands upon the failure of Occurrence heirs of a person dying seised in fee and intestate, to the lord of whom it is holden, occur, not very unfrequently, from an illegitimate person becoming a purchaser of land or being made a trustee, and sometimes, though very rarely, from there being no known relation of the person last seised of the blood of the family through whom the land descended (c).

lord.

In case of a total failure of heirs, there is sometimes Difficulty of ascertaining a difficulty in ascertaining who is the lord of the fee. superior The statute Quia emptores, 18 Edw. 1, st. 1, put a stop to the practice of subinfeudation, and enacted, that on every alienation of the fee simple, the land should. be held of the superior lord, and land is now most usually held immediately of the crown. But where freehold land was held of a subject at the time of passing that statute, and nothing has since occurred to alter the tenure, the lord of the manor or other person

(z) 2 Bl. Comm. 245; Sullivan's Lect. 382; 1 Eden, C. C. 191. (a) Co. Litt. 13, 92.

(b) 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 106, s. 9.

(c) 3rd Real Prop. Rep. p. 4; see Doe d. Blackburn v. Blackburn, 1 Mood. & R. 547.