Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 2, Page 75

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Volume 2, Page 75

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[001] whether the creditor is present or not. But I ask whether the creditor, if his money
[002] is not paid on the day, has a free tenement immediately? He has if he is in
[003] possession; if he is not, he has an action on the agreement.

If land is given to a bastard alone or in maritagium.

[005] Land given to a bastard contains the tacit or express condition of a reversion [if
[006] heirs of his body fail, but] we must see [If land is given to a bastard in maritagium
[007] with a woman, either to them and their common heirs or to them and the heirs of the
[008] bastard,¹ it reverts to the donor by the tacit limitation in the gift if heirs common to
[009] them both fail. If it is to the heirs of the wife, then if she has heirs of the bastard the
[010] land will remain to their common heirs, for such will be the wife's heirs though they
[011] are common. If common heirs fail, it will descend to other heirs of the wife, those by
[012] another husband or her collateral heirs.]² ³[if] it is given to him and his heirs or to
[013] him and his assigns. If ‘to him and his heirs,’ then, in the absence of heirs [of his
[014] body], whether homage has been taken or not, the land will be the escheat of his lords
[015] for failure of heirs, and it will remain with such lord despite the homage, because
[016] homage disappears wherever heirs fail.⁴ But if it is made to the bastard ‘and
[017] his heirs or assigns,’ or ‘to whom he wishes to assign,’⁵ then, if he has assigned it
[018] during his lifetime, at a suitable and proper time, as where⁶ he made a gift, and in
[019] the same way,⁷ the assignment and gift will be good though he has no heirs of his
[020] body, though it would not be valid, in the absence of such heirs,⁸ without the permission
[021] granted him by the agreement and the modus of the gift.⁹ [And note that
[022] assignment was first instituted for the advantage of bastards.] [But] whether the
[023] gift is made to the bastard ‘and his heirs’ or to him ‘and his heirs and assigns,’ if
[024] he has no heirs or does not make his assigns at the proper time the land so given,
[025] despite the homage, will revert to the donor and remain with him for lack of heirs
[026] and assigns.¹⁰

The dower of a bastard's wife.

[028] If that occurs, what will become of the wife's dower, in as much as she has no
[029] warrantor of her dower since there is neither heir nor assign, nor even a legatee,
[030] as where the land is devised, as in burgages?¹¹ In all these cases a woman will
[031] obtain her dower though warrantors do not exist, for her husband, though a
[032] bastard,

Notes

1. ‘bastardi’ for ‘uxoris’

2. Belongs infra 80 at n. 4

3. Reading: ‘si data fuerit ei ...’; om: ‘Item esto quod ... addatur’, a connective

4. This had been a question earlier: infra 82, 188; Bailey in Camb. L. Jour., ix, 88-91

5. The words ‘in his lifetime or devise at his death’ seem once to have followed here, as supra 70, infra iv, 283

6. ‘ut si’

7. ‘if he devised it at his death,’ apparently deleted, as infra line 34

8. Infra 76

9. Infra iv, 283; ‘conventionem’ for ‘condicionem’

10. Infra 82

11. Infra 149, iii, 295