Although Henry had intended his newly created Grand Assize to determine issues of right, not possession, in land, in practice quite quickly novel disseisin superseded the Grand Assize and became itself the primary determinant of right in land—partly because, from dealing only with 'recent' disseisin, its remit was gradually extended further and further back in time.G. O. Sayles, The Medieval Foundations of England (London 1967) p. 339-40 A further significant extension involved the application of the writ to profits and rights emanating from land, including rents. Thus, for example, the date of disseisin allowed at the Common Bench by 1321 went back as far as 1242; while in the 1321 London eyre, of eighty-one cases of novel disseisin, only half concerned property (houses or shops), the other half dealt with rents.
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The United States cannot acquire jurisdiction tortiously or by disseisin of the state, or by occupancy with merely the tacit consent of the state.
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On 2 October 1251 William de Nucemaigne filed a writ of novel disseisin against William Devereux for tenements in Frome Halmond.HC Maxwell Lyte (editor). Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry III, Volume 7, 1251 to 1253. (London: 1927).
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Cokayne (1926) vol. v., p. 393Burke, John, History of The Commoners of Great Britain, and Ireland, London, 1835, vol. II, p. 583n. In 1275–6 Gilbert de Stapleton arraigned an assize of novel disseisin against him and others touching a tenement in Thorntoncolling’, Yorkshire.
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Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Volume 1: Henry III. (London: Institute of Historical Research, 1904). Pages: 165-171 In 1284 Maud de Giffard, now a widow, pursued a suit of novel disseisin against Robert's heir, Walter de Beysin, concerning a tenement in Billingsly.Major General Hon.
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He had several run-ins with the law, in 1408 for 'illegal disseisin of land at Colyford, Devon' and in July 1405, for 'fornication with Alice Benet'. He confessed and was fined, but in 1408, was being investigated for this same offence. Baker was a cloth merchant. He was MP for Lyme Regis in 1407.
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According to Glanvill the case was a variant of the novel disseisin, upon which the owner could sue for the damage caused.Glanvill, Tractatus de legibus, ed. G. D. G. Hall (1965), 34–6. As parliament's powers grew it developed into twelve men chosen at full Hustings, originally held in FitzAilwin's house, that laid the foundations of the jury system at assizes.
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From land, the Grand Assize was extended to cover such things as mills and local services as well.J. Baker ed., The Oxford History of the Laws of England (Oxford) p. 527 However, the Assize of novel disseisin, originally designed only to settle possession or seissen, gradually came to displace the Grand Assize in questions of right as well, as a swifter process;G.
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J. R. Tanner ed., The Cambridge Medieval History Vol V (Cambridge 1926) p. 588 While the so-called possessory assizes, such as Novel Disseisin, had marked a great advance in royal justice, they proved too rigid for the full complexities of land law, and so had to be supplemented by more specialised praecipe writs, such as Praecipe for Dower, or Praecipe Quod Reddat.S. H. Steinberg ed.
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Alan's son Alan II inherited Siston as evidenced by the lawsuit of novel disseisin brought against him in 1320 by Sir Nicholas de Kingston his retainer, who claimed he had been unjustly deprived of his "free tenement of Siston"Aug.1320. K.B.27/246m.136d. Latin text given in Saul, N. Appendix 1. Clearly Plokenet himself was not in residence at Siston, unlike Walerand. Alan II d.s.p.
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Other methods of trial continued, including trial by combat and trial by ordeal.Warren (2000), pp. 357–358. After the Assize of Clarendon in 1166, royal justice was extended into new areas through the use of new forms of assizes, in particular novel disseisin, mort d'ancestor and dower unde nichil habet, which dealt with the wrongful dispossession of land, inheritance rights and the rights of widows respectively.Brand, pp.
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He further argued that the Earl did not have entry, except by disseisin, which Roger Bigod did to his father. Devereux requested an inquiry, and the Earl's bailiff came and asked for his lord's court because the tenement claimed is within his lord's liberty of Netherwent. Therefore, a day was granted them on 12 April 1282. On that day the plea was put in respite until 12 November 1282.
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In English law, the assize of novel disseisin ("recent dispossession"; ) was an action to recover lands of which the plaintiff had been disseised, or dispossessed. It was one of the so-called "petty (possessory) assizes" established by Henry II in the wake of the Assize of Clarendon of 1166;G. O Sayles, The Medieval Foundations of England (London 1966) p. 339 and like the other two was only abolished in 1833.
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Despite its advantages, novel disseisin was also open to abuse – as when a dispossessor pre-empted its use against the rightful seisin.S. H. Steinberg, A New Dictionary of British History (London 1963) p. 249 With the passage of time, legalistic means of obstructing its working were devised, and, under bastard feudalism, the suborning of the juries that were the new assize's great strength also multiplied.Z. N. Brooke ed.
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It may have arisen either out of the "appeal of felony", or assize of novel disseisin, or replevin. Later, after the Statute of Westminster 1285, in the 1360s, the "trespass on the case" action arose for when the defendant did not direct force. As its scope increased, it became simply "action on the case". The English Judicature Act passed 1873 through 1875 abolished the separate actions of trespass and trespass on the case.
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It led to three assizes of novel disseisin and a violent attack by Gerard on his opponent on Castle Street. Finally they compromised, with St Pierre handing over the property, but Gerard compensating him by resigning in his favour the constableship of Shrewsbury Castle – a post he finally acquired on 15 February 1413.Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1408–1413, p. 466. The legal costs to the borough, including fees to Burley, the serjeant-at-law and the attorney, came to £2 10s.
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Robert was a King's clerk and royal justice in the reign of Henry II.Gaydon and Pugh, Colleges of secular canons: Shrewsbury, section 4 Some of the cases in which he was involved are known. For example, on 11 February 1189 Robert was one of the justiciars who helped settle a suit precipitated by an assize of novel disseisin concerning Lilleshall Abbey over disputed land at Hencott, north of Shrewsbury.Eyton, Volume 6, p.368 A year or two later, he was a justiciar in a long-running case involving land at Longford.
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Facing the disorder of self- help over the possession of land in the wake of the reign of King Stephen, Henry II in his nationwide assizes of Clarendon and Northampton had his justices "cause an inquisition to be made concerning dispossessions carried out contrary to the assize"."Assize of Northampton", in D. Baker, ed. The Early Middle Ages (London 1968) p. 150 Drawing on the sophisticated models offered by canon law, the king subsequently created the private (and purchasable) writ of novel disseisin, which enabled individuals to take disputed possession cases to the royal courts.
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The next year Walter having not prosecuted his writ of novel disseisin against de Tamworth and his wife respecting his tenements in West Bromwich, was placed at the mercy of the court, but his fine was remitted at the instance of Edmund de Mortimer.Collections for a History of Staffordshire, Volume 7, Part 2. (London: Harrison and Sons, 1886). Page 93This Walter Devereux may have been the cousin, Walter Devereux of Bodenham who eventually inherited his lands In September 1304, Walter Devereux withdrew a suit against Agnes, widow of Roger de Somery, regarding his tenements in West Bromwich.
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Eleanor, the king's sister, was a child of about twelve at the time of the grant: she was to be a living link between the leadership of the baronial opposition to successive kings, as she later married Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester. Almost immediately the abbey became locked in a conflict with local landowners. The abbot and convent were accused of encroaching on the common pasture by erecting buildings and possibly sowing crops. Roger of Lench, possibly the lord of the manor, and Stephen of Lench, initiated an assize of novel disseisin to prevent them, perhaps on behalf of the commoners.
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De Bréauté refused to give the castles up, and in response the royal court sent justices to his land with a fake charge of Breach of the Peace. They found him guilty of 16 counts of Wrongful Disseisin, and on 16 June William de Bréauté, Falkes' brother, seized Henry of Braybrooke, one of the justices of Dunstable, who ruled against de Bréautés in 16 suits under the new royal writs. Braybrooke had made himself a personal enemy of both de Bréautés. This was foolish in the extreme, as the King and his court were barely 20 miles away discussing the defence of Poitou.
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Warren, p. 132. In part he was following in the tradition of Henry I and Henry II, but by the 13th century the volume of administrative work had greatly increased, which put much more pressure on a king who wished to rule in this style. John was in England for much longer periods than his predecessors, which made his rule more personal than that of previous kings, particularly in previously ignored areas such as the north.Warren, p. 132; Huscroft, p. 171. The administration of justice was of particular importance to John. Several new processes had been introduced to English law under Henry II, including novel disseisin and mort d'ancestor.
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The jury found that William had contravened his tenants' historic rights and deprived them of pasture they required for their animals through enclosures designed to improve his estate. He counter-sued the prioress and others for breaking down his fence. However, Sarah and the other tenants won their cases. It seems that White Ladies was dogged in defending common pasture. In 1305 the prioress of the time, possibly still Sarah, arraigned an assize of novel disseisin to assert her rights against William Wycher, who seems to have been particularly aggressive in enclosing commons after taking control through marriage of the manor of Blymhill, which neighboured the priory demesne.
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Rather, an elaborate tale was told in the pleadings about how one John Doe leased land from the plaintiff but was ousted by Richard Roe, who claimed a contrary lease from the defendant. These events, if true, led to the "assize of novel disseisin", later called the "mixed action in ejectment", a procedure in which title could ultimately be determined, but which led instead to trial by jury. This is the origin of the names John Doe, Richard Roe, and so forth, for anonymous parties. The fiction of Doe, Roe, and the leases was not challenged by the parties unless they wished to stake their life and safety on a trial by combat.
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The statute of 1278 provided for several important legal amendments, including a modification of novel disseisin, one of the most popular forms of action for the recovery of land which had been seized illegally. It challenged baronial rights through a revival of the system of general eyres (royal justices to go on tour throughout the land) and through a significant increase in the number of pleas of quo warranto (literally, "By what warrant?") to be heard by such eyres. In such proceedings, individual barons and franchise holders were expected either to show the King's judges proper legal title by which they possessed their rights to private jurisdictions or to lose such rights.
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In particular, the "royal English contract protected by the action of debt is identified with the Islamic Aqd, the English assize of novel disseisin is identified with the Islamic Istihqaq, and the English jury is identified with the Islamic lafif." Other English legal institutions such as "the scholastic method, the licence to teach", the "law schools known as Inns of Court in England and Madrasas in Islam" and the "European commenda" (Islamic Qirad) may have also originated from Islamic law. The methodology of legal precedent and reasoning by analogy (Qiyas) are also similar in both the Islamic and common law systems. These influences have led some scholars to suggest that Islamic law may have laid the foundations for "the common law as an integrated whole".
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S. Annesley, 'The Countess and the Constable: An exploration of the conflict that arose between Margaret de Burgh and Bertram de Criel', Fine of the Month, July 2008, Henry III Fine Rolls Project, especially section 8, and sources there cited. De Criol and the king were reconciled in February 1231, and he was rehabilitated under the stricture that he could not plead his cause against de Burgh before the king's court.'Criol', in W. Dugdale, The Baronage of England, 3 Vols (London 1675-6), I, pp. 770-71. (Umich/EEBO). In ordering the return of Moulsford, the king owned that the disseisin had been "at the king's will", a seeming trespass upon those rights in Magna Carta upon which de Burgh himself had insisted.
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There was a number of serious disputes between the monks and de Furnivall concerning his use of abbey lands and property, culminating in the monks barricading themselves within the abbey for 16 weeks in 1319. It wasn't until July 1319, with the help of other local landowners, that the monks received an assize of novel disseisin and their property usage was returned to them. With an income of less than £200 per year the abbey should have been suppressed under the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535, which dictated all religious houses with a low annual income should be dissolved. The monks paid a fine of £100 for a royal licence to continue, until 1537 when the abbey was surrendered and the land and property sold off.
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It was early provided that, in seeking to remove one who wrongfully entered another's land with force and arms, a person could allege disseisin (dispossession) and demand (and pay for) a writ of entry. That writ gave him the written right to re-enter his own land and established this right under the protection of the Crown if need be, hence its value. In 1253, to prevent judges from inventing new writs, Parliament provided in the Provisions of Oxford that the power to issue writs would thereafter be transferred to judges only one writ at a time, in a "writ for right" package known as a form of action. However, because it was limited to enumerated writs for enumerated rights and wrongs, the writ system sometimes produced unjust results.
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Trailbaston (traillebastone, traillebastoun, traylebastoun) was a special type of itinerant judicial commission first created during the reign of Edward I of England and used many times thereafter during the reigns of Edward II and Edward III, primarily to punish felonies and trespass at the king's suit. The first trailbaston commissions date back to 1305, when Edward I directed several teams of justices to visit each English county and seek presentments for felonies (homicide, theft, arson, and rape) and certain trespasses (premeditated assault, extortion, and violent disseisin). Edward I added conspiracy to the list of presentments in late 1305. In 1307 Edward I issued a revamped trailbaston commission that directed the justices to try assizes and deliver all prisoners in the counties they visited, not just those charged in previous trailbaston sessions.
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By mid–1215 he was among those whose forfeiture was specifically ordered by John, and after the creation of the Magna Carta he was forced to forfeit his other High Shrievalties as well. When hostilities began again John had Braybrooke's lands parcelled out to other landowners, but Braybrooke continued to support Prince Louis of France, defending Mountsorrel Castle against the royalists and participating in the Battle of Lincoln. After the Treaty of Lambeth Braybrooke submitted to John's young successor, Henry III, and had many of his lands restored. Although he never became a High Sheriff again, he served as a royal justice in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and was tasked from 10 June 1224 to hear an Assize of novel disseisin against Falkes de Breauté; he was perfectly suited, firstly because he was a vassal of William de Beauchamp, who had had Bedford Castle taken from him by de Breauté, and secondly because de Breauté now held the High Shrievalties of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, previous Braybrooke's.
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That Roger de Beaufo was a lineal descendant of either Ralph or William de Bello Fago cannot be affirmed, nor can his relation to his contemporary Nicholas de Beaufo, of Beaufo's manor, be precisely determined, and we cannot connect him with Norfolk, all the estates which he is known to have possessed being situate in Berkshire and Oxfordshire; but the singularity of the name renders it highly probable that he was derived from the same original stock as the Norfolk family. The earliest mention of him occurs in the roll of parliament for 1305, when he was assigned with William de Mortimer and others as receiver of petitions from Ireland and Guernsey, with power to answer all such as might not require the attention of the king. In the same year he received, with the same William de Mortimer, a special commission to try an action of "novel disseisin" — i.e. ejectment — brought by one John Pecche against the abbot of Westminster for the recovery of a messuage and one carucate of land in Warwickshire.
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We find him summoned with the other judges to parliament at Northampton by Edward II in 1307, and to attend the coronation of that monarch in 1308. He was not summoned to parliament after that year. He is classed as a tenant of land or rents to the value of £20 or upwards in Berkshire and Oxfordshire in a writ of summons to muster at London for service overseas issued in 1297; in 1301 he was included in the list of those summoned to attend the king at Berwick-on-Tweed with horses and arms for the invasion of Scotland, as one of the contingents to be furnished by the counties of Bedford and Buckingham. From a grant enrolled in the King's Bench we know that he possessed land at Great Multon, in Oxfordshire, and from the record of an assize of "novel disseisin" preserved in the rolls of the same court it appears that his daughter Isabella acquired by marriage a title to an estate in Little Bereford in the same county, which a subsequent divorce and remarriage was held not to divest.
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