Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 3, Page 14

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Volume 3, Page 14

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[001] is where one with no right, no spark of right, enters into vacant possession, possessed
[002] neither corpore nor animo, as into an hereditas iacens before it had been taken up by
[003] the heir,¹ or by the chief lord by reason of wardship or as his escheat, if there are no
[004] heirs, or where, after the death of [a tenant], one puts himself in seisin before the
[005] tenement has come to him to whom it ought to come by a fine levied, or the modus of
[006] a gift, where succession can play no part, or where, after the death of one who holds
[007] for life the tenement ought to revert to the owner. [What possession must be called
[008] vacant and what not, may be seen clearly enough above in the title on the acquisition
[009] of possession.]² When one having no right has so intruded himself and does not admit
[010] the heir or the chief lord, as was said above, or him to whom the tenement ought to
[011] revert by fine levied, by the modus of the gift, or as an escheat on the failure of heirs
[012] or the commission of felony, or in any other way whatever, help is afforded those³ to
[013] whom the tenement ought to revert, in several ways, depending on their several cases,
[014] by the following writs. If it ought to revert to the chief lord as his escheat because one
[015] enfeoffed ‘to him and the heirs of his body issuing’ has died without such heir, the
[016] writ is this:

Of land which ought to revert for various reasons as an escheat to a chief lord.

[018] ‘The king to the sheriff, greeting. Put A. by gage and safe pledges that he be before
[019] etc. to answer B. as to why he intruded himself into so much land with the appurtenances
[020] in such a vill which C. held of the said B., and of which the same C. was seised
[021] on the day he died, and which ought to revert to the same B. as to the chief lord of
[022] that fee since the aforesaid C. died without an heir of his body. And have etc. Witness
[023] etc.’

If one has intruded himself into land which ought to revert.

[025] There is another form of the same writ, where one who is not heir has intruded himself
[026] into land as though he were heir, on the seisin of the chief lord, which ought to remain
[027] in his hand until the true heir has come to do to him what of right he ought to do. In
[028] that case the writ is this:

By what warrant he intruded.

[030] ‘[The king to the sheriff etc. Put A. etc.] to answer [B.] by what warrant he intruded
[031] himself into so much land belonging to the fee of the said B., which the said B. had
[032] taken into his hand until the true heir should come to do to him what of right he
[033] ought to do, as

Notes

1. Supra ii, 157

2. Supra ii, 130, 132

3. ‘eis’