8o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



purtenant to the land seized there were easements or rights of 

 enjoyment over other adjacent lands, the intruder by his posses- 

 sion of the principal estate became legally entitled to enjoy such 

 easements. The estate of the person dispossessed was in the lan- 

 guage of the law " turned into a right." This " right," although 

 untransferable to any one else, could be released to the intruder, 

 and by such release the estate of the intruder, which was tortious 

 or wrongful, became rightful. But, although words of inherit- 

 ance were generally necessary to convey more than an estate for 

 life, no such words were necessary in a release to a dispossessor, 

 since the fee or entire estate was already in him, though wrong- 

 fully. For the same reason a release to the intruder for a year, 

 or even for a day, was as good as though to him and his heirs for- 

 ever, since the fee, or entire title, which he already had, though 

 wrongfully, could not, it was said, be curtailed by a deed without 

 entry that is, without a transfer of the possession. And upon 

 the ground that the estate was already in the intruder, an instru- 

 ment executed to him by the person ousted, although it purported 

 to give and grant the described premises, was held to operate 

 only as a confirmation of the estate already vested in the usurper. 

 So, while the intruder was in possession, no action could be main- 

 tained against him for trespass, or for the value of crops har- 

 vested by him, or for other similar profits ; nor could such actions 

 be maintained even after the rightful claimant had recovered 

 possession, except by recourse to a legal fiction (invented to avert 

 such injustice), by which for such purposes a temporarily dispos- 

 sessed person was, after recovery, construed to have been con- 

 tinuously in possession. 



The right to dispose of lands by will was first introduced in 

 the reign of Henry VIII by a statute which declared that " all 

 persons having any manors, lands, or tenements may give and 

 dispose of them by last will." In construing this statute, it was 

 held, in harmony with the foregoing doctrines of the common 

 law, that only those persons had lands who were in possession 

 of them, and that dispossessed persons, therefore, had nothing 

 upon which a will could operate. Such was the law in Eng- 

 land until changed by statute in 1838. Such also had been 

 the recognized law before the statute of Henry VIII in those 

 counties where by local custom the power to will had previously 

 existed. 



But, although a person by being ejected from his lands lost all 

 his estate in them, he was not without rights of redress. If he 

 acted promptly he was entitled to recover his lost ground, and, 

 until prohibited by the statute of Richard III, he might enlist 

 and employ whatever forces were necessary for that purpose. 

 The time within which this right of personal recovery, or, as it 



