Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 3, Page 96

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Volume 3, Page 96

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[001] the truth of all investigated by a jury, not in the manner of an assise, except this, that
[002] if the exception of villeinage is raised with the addition (among others) that he may
[003] not marry his daughter without the payment of merchet, at a fixed or an uncertain
[004] amount, that will never be proper against a freeman, though he holds by villein customs,
[005] unless he has specially bound himself thereto or has coupled himself to a neif in
[006] a villeinage,¹ because of the rights of liberty, for though he holds in villeinage, he
[007] nevertheless is sui juris;² a free man does not subject his body or blood to servitude
[008] though he holds in villeinage. It is only proper against a bondsman, who does not rule
[009] himself but is ruled by his lord.]³ ⁴<If anything is decided contrary to the rules mentioned
[010] above it must not be observed as a judgment or as law, for it is rather to be
[011] called error than truth, corruption than custom, as where [it is said that] if one acknowledges
[012] that he was once a villein but was manumitted that he will not recover a
[013] free tenement by the assise, though he puts forward a charter of manumission, as
[014] among the pleas which follow the king in the twenty-third year of his reign in the
[015] county of Suffolk, an assise of novel disseisin [beginning] ‘if Ralph son of Robert.’⁵
[016] But the result may be saved where one has sold his villein for money and the villein
[017] sold was never delivered to the purchaser during the life of the seller or buyer, and
[018] who, if he were delivered, does not change his status though he changes his lord.⁶ If one
[019] so manumitted has a child, though by a free mother possessing an inheritance, and he
[020] is ejected after his mother's death, he will not recover a free tenement by the assise, no
[021] more than will villeins, as among the pleas which follow the king in the twenty-first
[022] year of his reign in the county of York, an assise of novel disseisin [beginning] ‘if
[023] William of Stockbridge.’⁷ A free woman possessing an inheritance, when she is joined
[024] to a villein and both are ejected, will not recover as long as the villein is alive,⁸ as
[025] among the pleas which follow the king in the twentieth year, an assise of novel disseisin
[026] concerning Walter of Emmedene and Alice the daughter of Erneld, in the
[027] county of Buckingham,⁹ but the contrary.>¹⁰

If one complains that he has been wrongfully disseised.

[029] It should be noted generally that when one complains that he has been wrongfully
[030] disseised, it may well be that he never was in seisin. On that ground the tenant will
[031] have an exception, and let the truth be ascertained by the assise. If he was in seisin,
[032] it may be that it was not in his own name but in another's, as a procurator, farmer,
[033] villein and the like. ¹¹<One may have seisin corpore and animo, his own or another's,
[034] and one may acquire a thing

Notes

1. Cf. supra 93

2. Om: ‘ut’

3. Supra ii, 90, infra 131; B.N.B., no. 1210

4. Supra i, 396

5. Not in B.N.B.; C.R.R., xv, no. 1927 (21H.3)

6. Supra 95

7. Not in B.N.B.; C.R.R. xv, no. 1920

8. Supra 93, infra 113

9. B.N.B., no. 1139: infra 113

10. As supra 35, 93, infra 115, 172: deleted

11. Supra i, 396