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or that which is before described. 2. Dower by particular custom; as that the wife should have half the husband's lands, or in some places the whole, and in some only a quarter. 3. Dower ad ostium ecclesiæ: which is where tenant in feesimple of full age, openly at the church door, doth endow his wife with the whole, or such quantity as he shall please, of his lands; on which the wife, after her husband's death, may enter without farther ceremony. 4. Dower ex assensu patris;

which is only a species of dower ad ostium ecclesiæ, made when the husband's father is alive, and the son by his consent, expressly given, endows his wife with parcel of his father's lands. In either of these cases, they must (to prevent frauds) be made in facie ecclesiæ et ad ostium ecclesiæ. But these specific dowers, ad ostium ecclesiæ and ex assensu patris, are now fallen into total disuse.

I proceed therefore to consider the method of endowment or assigning dower, by the common law, which is now the only usual species. By the charter of Henry I. and afterwards by magna charta, a woman shall remain in her husband's capital mansion-house for forty days after his death, during which time her dower shall be assigned. These forty days are called the widow's quarantine. The particular lands to be held in dower, must be assigned by the heir of the husband, or his guardian. If the heir or his guardian do not assign her dower within the term of quarantine, or do assign it unfairly, she has her remedy at law, and the sheriff is appointed to assign it. Or if the heir

(being under age) or his guardian assign more than she ought to have, it may be afterwards remedied by writ of admeasurement of dower. If the thing of which she be endowed be divisible, her dower must be set out by metes and bounds; but if it be indivisible, she must be endowed specially; as, of the third presentation to a church, the third toll-dish of a mill, the third part of the profits of an office, the third sheaf of tithe, and the like.

4. How dower may be barred or prevented. A widow may be barred of her dower not only by elopement, divorce, being an alien, the treason of her husband, and other disabilities before-mentioned, but also by detaining the title deeds, or evidences of the estate from the heir, until she restores them and, by the statute of Gloucester, if a dowager alienes the land assigned her for dower she forfeits it ipso facto, and the heir may recover it by action. A woman also may be barred of her dower, by levying a fine or suffering a recovery of the lands, during her coverture. But the most usual method of barring dowers is by jointures, as regulated by the statute 27 Hen. VIII. c. 10.

A jointure, which, strictly speaking, signifies a joint estate, limited to both husband and wife, but in common acceptation extends also to a sole estate, limited to the wife only, is thus defined by sir Edward Coke; "a competent livelihood of freehold for the wife, of lands and tenements; to take effect, in profit or possession, presently after the death of the husband; for the life of the wife

at least."

1. The jointure must take effect immediately on the death of the husband. 2. It must be for her own life at least, and not per auter vie, or for any term of years, or other smaller estate. 3. It must be made to herself, and no other in trust for her. 4. It must be made, and so in the deed particularly expressed to be, in satisfaction of her whole dower, and not of any particular part of it; [and 5. It may be added, it must be of freehold lands, for the statute 27 Hen. VIII. concerning jointures, does not extend to copyholds; "so that if a jointure be made to a woman in copyholds, it will be no bar to her dower."] If the jointure be made to her after marriage, she has her election after her husband's death, as in dower ad ostium ecclesiæ, and may either accept it, or refuse it, and betake herself to her dower at common law; for she was not capable of consenting to it during coverture. And if, by any fraud or accident, a jointure made before marriage proves to be on a bad title, and the jointress is evicted, or turned out of possession, he shall then (by the provisions of the same statute) have her dower pro tanto at the common law.

CHAPTER IX.

OF ESTATES LESS THAN FREEHOLD.

OF estates that are less than freehold, there are three sorts, 1. Estates for years: 2. Estates at will: 3. Estates by sufferance.

I. An estate for years is a contract for the possession of lands and tenements, for some determinate period and it takes place where a man letteth them to another for the term of a certain number of years, agreed upon between the lessor and the lessee, and the lessee enters thereon.

Every estate which must expire at a period certain and prefixed, by whatever words created, is an estate for years. And therefore this estate is frequently called a term, terminus, because its duration or continuance is bounded, limited, and determined: for every such estate must have a certain beginning, and certain end. But id certum est, quod certum reddi potest: therefore if a man make a lease to another, for so many years as J. S. shall name, it is a good lease for years; for though it is at present uncertain, yet when J. S. hath named the years, it is then reduced to a certainty. If no day of commencement is named in the creation of this estate, it begins from the making, or delivery, of the lease.

An estate for life, even if it be per auter vie, we have seen, is a freehold; but an estate for a thousand years is only a chattel, and reckoned part of the personal estate. Hence it follows, that a lease for years may be made to commence in futuro, though a lease for life cannot. As, if I grant lands to Titius to hold from Michaelmas term next for twenty years, this is good; but to hold from Michaelmas next for the term of his natural life, is void. For no estate of freehold can commence in futuro; because it cannot be created at common

law without livery of seizin, or corporal possession of the land and corporal possession cannot be given of an estate now, which is not to commence now, but hereafter.

Tenant for term of years hath incident to and inseparable from his estate, unless by special agreement, the same estovers which we formerly observed that tenant for life was entitled to; that is to say, house-bote, fire-bote, plough-bote, and hay-bote.

With regard to emblements, or the profits of lands sowed by the tenant for years, there is this difference between him and tenant for life: that where the term of tenant for years depends upon a certainty, as if he holds from Midsummer for ten years, and in the last year he sows a crop of corn, and it is not ripe and cut before Midsummer, the end of his term, the landlord shall have it; for the tenant knew the expiration of his term, and therefore it was his own folly to sow what he never could reap the profits of. the profits of. But where the lease for years depends upon an uncertainty; as, upon the death of the lessor, being himself only tenant for life, or being a husband seized in right of his wife; or if the term of years be determinable upon a life or lives; in all these cases, the estate for years not being certainly to expire at a time foreknown, but merely by the act of God, the tenant or his executors, shall have the emblements in the same manner that a tenant for life or his executors shall be entitled thereto. Not so, if it determine by the act of the party himself; as if tenant for years does

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