Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 3, Page 60

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Volume 3, Page 60

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[001] of any tenement. Certainly, it appears prima facie, because the priory or the abbey
[002] or other house is, so to speak, the tenement from which the rent ought to issue.
[003] Hence it appears that it suffices if a view is made of the abbey, as of other tenements
[004] from which rents issue,¹ as of a private house, ²and [that the assise lies because]
[005] such payment is, so to speak, a payment from a chamber, as to which there is no
[006] distraint.³ But in truth such abbeys⁴ and priories are not the tenements of any
[007] individual person, since they are sacred and holy things, the property of God, not
[008] of any private or individual person.⁵ Since corrodies are thus quasi-spiritual or
[009] annexed to spiritualities, if they are withheld⁶ recourse must not be had to the secular
[010] forum, and since, in connexion with corrodies simony may be committed, let recourse
[011] be had to the ecclesiastical forum, that the matter may there be determined,
[012] for there cognisance of simony may be taken.⁷<One may not make a free tenement of
[013] a rent which issues from a sacred thing.⁸ An abbey or a priory is a sacred thing, the
[014] property of God, not of any private person. Thus since one cannot convert any part
[015] of them to the use of private persons and make of a sacred a non-sacred or profane
[016] thing,⁹ [From a sacred thing, dedicated to God by priests, one may [not] have a
[017] free tenement, and therefore no assise of novel disseisin.¹⁰ But before the thing was
[018] dedicated to God and made sacred, the founder could well except and retain for
[019] himself allowances and lodgings and the like, which were never sacred.] a rent
[020] issuing from a sacred thing can no more be anyone's free tenement, that is, the
[021] property of any private person, than the thing from which it issues.> <Nor may a
[022] personal rent be a free tenement which is owed as appurtenant to some thing, by
[023] reason of which it is claimed, when he cannot have the rent unless he has the thing
[024] for which and because of which it is owed, as where one has a hundred and some pay a
[025] rent not to attend,¹¹ because that rent does not issue from any tenement nor is it
[026] owed because of a tenement, nor may the jurors make a view of any tenement.>
[027] ¹² The jurors ought also to see whether the tenement is his own or held in common, as
[028] where it is common among co-heirs and parceners [let the view be made of the whole
[029] held in common, no matter by whom the parcener has been disseised.] or neighbours,¹³
[030] as balks which distinguish and mark the boundaries of fields, whether it is
[031] a tree, a bank, a stone or whatever. ¹⁴<It is clear that a boundary

Notes

1. ‘proveniunt’

2-3. ‘et huiusmodi . . . nulla districtio,’ from lines 7-8

4. ‘abbatiae’

5. Supra ii, 58, infra 128

6. ‘detineantur’

7. Supra i, 394

8. Rubric

9. Om: ‘ita quod’; new sentence

10. ‘nullam assisam’

11. Infra 116, 117

12. Om: ‘Item . . . iuratoribus’

13. Om: ‘Item . . . commune’

14. Supra i, 394