ON SOME ANCIENT BURTON MANUSCRIPTS. 105 
effected in this way. The feoffor and the feofee both went on to the 
land to be conveyed, and, in the presence of witnesses, the feoffor 
took up a clod of earth, or a stick, or twig, and handed it to the 
feofee, saying at the same time: ‘‘I deliver this to you in the 
name of seisin of the whole.” By this simple act the feoffee 
became the owner, and entitled to receipt of rents and profits. I 
believe it was usual for a deed of feoffment to be signed and 
sealed and handed to the purchaser, but it was not necessary. 
It is not difficult to conceive how, in those wild, turbulent, and 
uneducated days, the fact of an owner actually making over his 
land to a new owner, publicly in the presence of witnesses, should 
be deemed a prime necessity; and that a written instrument 
which few could read, and fewer understand, should be considered 
a thing of quite secondary importance. Our ancestors appear to 
have had an almost superstitious veneration for “ seisin,” or feudal 
possession, for if a person should have made ‘‘livery of 
seisin” when he was not really in a position to do so, 
nevertheless the person upon whom the seisin had been so con- 
ferred actually thereby acquired the estate which had been 
wrongfully conferred upon him. Thus, supposing a person to 
have had a life estate in property, and he was to have enfeoffed and 
made “livery of seisin’” of the property for an estate of 
inheritance upon someone, then this latter person actually acquired 
an estate of inheritance in the property. The feoffment in this case 
was said to have a fortious operation, that is, a wrongful operation. 
The person who was entitled to be enfeoffed, if there were any one 
such person, was said to be ‘“‘disseised,” that is, he was, as it 
were, disestablished and disendowed ; and the person tortiously 
enfeoffed was called a “‘disseisor,” and he had to be got out by 
operation of law: a mere physical “ kicking out,” so to speak, 
would not be effective, for he might still enfeoff some third person, 
who might enfeoff number four, and so on. I cannot help think- 
ing it was during the times when the notion of “seisin ” prevailed 
that the saying originated, ‘“ Possession is nine points in the law ;”’ 
and I have always thought the saying was taken from the analogy 
of the game of whist, of course Jong whist. The saying may be 
