A CHAPTER ON LEGAL DEVELOPMENT. 805 



was called in the law, right of entry, could be exercised was at 

 first very short. 



In the time of Bracton (thirteenth century) it was only four 

 days, that being deemed sufficient time within which to arouse 

 the neighbors and organize an invading force. The right was 

 afterward recognized as continuing a year and a day. Still later 

 it might be exercised during the lifetime of the intruder. Origi- 

 nally entry could be made only as against the intruder personally, 

 not against one claiming under him. Afterward it could be made 

 against the intruder's first successor, then against his second suc- 

 cessor, still later against others still more remote, etc. It was 

 about the time of Lord Bacon before a re-entry could be made 

 after the lands, by death of the intruder, had passed into the pos- 

 session of his heir. It was the wrongful character of the in- 

 truder's estate that was supposed to justify re-entry, and it was 

 deemed inadmissible to treat the estate as wrongful in the hands 

 of the heir, upon whom it had been cast by operation of law 

 without any wrongdoing on his part. 



The legal effect of a re-entry was to reinvest the ousted per- 

 son with his lost estate. Originally it was no doubt necessary for 

 him to eject the wrongdoer and resume complete control. It was 

 soon perceived that where two persons were upon the same piece 

 of ground, each claiming possession, he should be deemed to have 

 the possession who had the right to it, and this principle was 

 variously applied with salutary effects. The law was still further 

 mitigated by considering that the effects of re-entry were attained 

 and the estate of the intruder divested by even a temporary en- 

 trance of the ousted person upon the land under a claim of right, 

 provided such entry was repeated at least once a year, thus keep- 

 ing up publicly a continual claim to the land. And it came to be 

 deemed sufficient as an entry if, when the ousted person could not 

 go upon the land for fear of violence, he went as near to it as he 

 safely could and publicly claimed it in the presence of witnesses. 

 By these acts of re-entry and continual claim the person dispos- 

 sessed could revive and keep alive his estate in the land, so as to 

 have a conveyable and inheritable interest, although the intruder 

 still remained in the actual possession; for, by construction of 

 law, the entry and continual claim were treated as amounting to 

 a recovery of the possession. The law also came to be so relaxed 

 that where one, by the same intruder, was dispossessed of sev- 

 eral tracts of land in one county, a re-entry upon one, in the 

 name of all, was treated as a good entry upon all. 



It is not surprising that under these circumstances there were 

 few branches of our early law which experienced a more luxuriant 

 growth than those that related to rights of entry, to descents that 

 took away rights of entry, and to the making of continual claim. 



