Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 3, Page 271

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Volume 3, Page 271

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[001] acquires in the name of his lord and his lord ratifies the acquisition when he learns
[002] of it,¹ or if the procurator acquires without his lord's knowledge and the lord dies
[003] before he learns of it; he dies sufficiently seised because he can never nullify the
[004] procurator's act. And in the same way, one may die seised through the person of a
[005] tutor, as where a tutor or guardian acknowledges a minor as heir and puts himself into
[006] seisin in the name of such minor;² though the minor does not take possession in his
[007] own person, which many do, [but dies], he dies sufficiently seised by virtue of the
[008] guardian's seisin and transmits such seisin to his heirs. The same may be said of a
[009] curator in seisin in the name of a minor by reason of socage or a feoffment.³ But if,
[010] when the guardian is in seisin of the inheritance, he does not acknowledge the minor
[011] as heir, though the proprietary right has descended to him, and the heir dies, he
[012] transmits nothing other than that to his nearer heirs, nothing except what he⁴ has,
[013] that is, the mere right and the property.⁵ The seisin he does not have he does not
[014] transmit, nor the possessory right. Recourse must therefore be had to the seisin of
[015] the ancestor of the minor who last died seised,⁶ and the same is true of one of full
[016] age.

Of last seisin; that seisin must of necessity follow the mere right and at the end remain with it.

[018] Several may die seised as of fee of one and the same thing, through different feoffments.
[019] If their respective heirs claim by the assise and sue in the proper order, at the
[020] end seisin or possession will return to the proprietas. We must begin from the seisin
[021] of him who last died seised,⁷ and from the last seisin⁸ [proceed] step by step and in
[022] order to the first. Recourse must also be had to last seisin, namely, that of one of
[023] several enfeoffed together in one gift, for no one of such⁹ feoffees will have the assise
[024] on the death of another,¹⁰ but their heirs, if the gift is made to them and their heirs,
[025] will have it on the death of him who died last of all, not on the deaths of the others
[026] who predeceased him, as may be seen,

If a gift is made to a concubine and her children.

[028] [as] where a gift is made to a man and wife and their heirs, or to a concubine and her
[029] children (named or not named) and their heirs, and when they are all in seisin some
[030] of them [die]; none will have the assise of mortdancestor because all were enfeoffed
[031] together to have and to hold¹¹ the whole, not a separate part, nor individually, but
[032] so that each of them

Notes

1. Supra ii, 136

2. Supra ii, 96, 135, iii, 247

3. Supra ii, 96, iii, 247

4. ‘ipse,’ all MSS

5. Supra 247

6. ‘quod (for ‘quia’) oportet . . . remaneat’: rubric; supra ii, 24, 106, 184

7. Infra 297

8. ‘seisina,’ as Fleta

9. ‘talibus’

10. Supra ii, 55, 319

11. Om: ‘nec’