286 right to recover them were in use in Glanvil's time.1 Bracton was too learned a civilian to con found rents with servitudes, which cannot consist in faciendo, while rents were received "by the hand of" the tenant; and I believe he himself in the practical parts of his work uniformly treats rents as corporeal things; certainly as tenements. .' In this action by writ of right, as in any other action by which a res corporalis is demanded, the demandant must point out the thing; as, for in stance, if it be a thing immovable, as a tenement, or a movable thing, as an animal, garment, &c. . . . If it is a tenement, he must show whether it is land or rent; and if rent, whether it be annual, proceeding from a tenement, or given de camera, as is distinguished above in the tract of novel disseisin." 3 It must be owned that later in the same passage he distinguishes corpora andjura, and gives an advowson as example of the latter; 8 while in Fet Assavoir, on the other hand, avowson d'tfglise is mentioned with various forms of land as objects of a writ of right founded on a claim, " de fee et de demeyne et de droit," no other incorporeal object being mentioned with it. The different forms of rents (including what also were distinguished as annuities) are thus described by Bracton incidentally, when pointing out the subjects of the judge's inquiries in an assize of n. d. fo. 184 a. If the disseisin be of a rent, inquiry should be made whether it be (1) one qui domino feoffatori debeatur [rent-service due to the ten ant's lord and feoffor]; or (2) qui coucedatur de aliquo tenemento annuatim percipiendus et ut tenementi feoffato [rent-charge,4 issuing out of a tenement, and as to the feoffee of a tenement; by which, if I understand it, Brac ton means that the rent-owner is as it were a feoffee of the tenement itself, or perhaps of 1 Lib. xii. cc. 4, 5. 2 Lib. v. tr. de Except, c. 27. § 3. Tw. VI. 406. 3 Ubi supra, fo. 422. Tw. VI. 412 4 See also, for another clear distinction of rent-charge from services and customs, fo. 35. Twiss, i. 278
the rent as a tenement]; or (3) de camera tatitum percipiendus ad vitam vet in fcodo dc haeredibus sine aliquo tenemento de quo debcat proveuire [an annuity as it now would be], and in that case (4) si detur pro aliquo tene mento, vel pro aliquo jure habendo, vel libcrtate in /undo alieno, in which case it might have the freehold quality of a true rent, as Bracton has shown (c. 16, § 9, fo. 180-18 i a). To be a freehold a rent must be held person ally, and not by virtue of something to which it was attached. If the rent could be claimed only if one held the thing cui et propter quam debelur, as when the owner of a hundred received rents from other parties for the privilege of exemption from attendance, no assize could be brought. But there is a re markable exception. If rent issued from one tenement payable to another in consideration of a servitude exercised by the former over the latter, and the rent-paying tenement re fused to avail itself of the servitude, it could not thus get rid of the rent, and an assize lay in that case for the rent, for the want of other remedy. When an assize n. d. was brought for rent, the jurors were to view the land out of which the rent proceeded as exactly as if the land itself were the subject of the action. They were also to view — that is, ascertain — the amount of rent, whether it consisted in money or in corn, wine, oil, etc. This is on the supposition that the rent is payable by the tenant of the land. No assize could be brought for a rent payable by another than the tenant, even though out of the profits of the land; as when the donor of the rent paid it himself out of profits received from the tenant by way of rent-service or otherwise. Such rents were not tenements, and no assize lay for them; some other action must be brought. So also when the rent was ex camera, not charged on land at all. All this shows very clearly the conception of the rent as a kind of estate in the land itself.1 This conception of a rent as distinct from a servitude or easement is clearly expressed 1 Bracton, lib. iv. tr. 1, c. 16, §§ 5, 6, fo. 180 it.
