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Kilty's Land-Holder's Assistant, and Land-Office Guide
Volume 73, Page 175   View pdf image (33K)
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LAND-HOLDER'S ASSISTANT. 175

    To return to the previous inquisition just spoken of,
although a sworn jury, in making it, must necessarily have
had in their view some law or rule governing escheats, in
order to determine whether the land under their
examination was escheatable or not, it cannot be supposed that they
considered in a critical manner the application of the feudal
or the common law doctrines on that subject to the
particular case in hand. The term escheat had originally a pretty
broad signification, as it comprehended all acquisitions of land
by means of any kind of chance or accident. In England its
import was restricted and bounded by the legal descriptions of
other methods of acquiring title by purchase, and it is stated
by Blackstone to denote" an obstruction of the course of
" descent and a consequent determination of the tenure by some
" unforeseen contingency." This obstruction and
consequent determination of the tenure might arise in two, and
but in two, general ways; to wit, by the tenants dying
without heirs, and by the attainder of his blood. In Maryland
the term escheat seems occasionally to have embraced all
methods in which lands might result back to the lord of the
fee either through want of other legal owners; through
forfeiture by treason or suicide or by means of failure in the
performance of conditions relative to rent, &c. It would seem
that the proprietary gave his own interpretation to this
ancient term, and that he was countenanced in it by the juries
and courts. There were so many ways for lands to fall back
or escheat to the proprietary, that there was little danger of a
failure whenever the government thought a case worthy of
enquiry. Besides the several proclamations subjecting lands
to forfeiture for non-compliance with the conditions of
plantation, there were acts of assembly denouncing the same
consequence upon the desertion of lands by not seating,
inhabiting, and paying rent for them agreeably to the terms of
purchase. If land was not found escheat in one way it was
in another, and the court, in rendering a judgment upon an
inquisition returned, or OFFICE FOUND, merely affirmed the
validity of the particular cause of escheat or forfeiture under which
the jury had deemed the case to fall; but supposing the want
of heirs to be, as it certainly was, the most general cause of
escheat, the rules in that particular appear to have been very
favourable to the proprietary.¾What they were can be
judged only by inference from particular cases, for no precise
instructions from the proprietary on that subject are to be found
on record, and the laws of the province are silent about it.
To judge summarily of the matter, I should suppose that if
a man died without leaving heirs of the whole blood in the
direct descending line his lands were held liable to escheat.
¾
Instances occur of a father's praying for the preemptio of





 
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Kilty's Land-Holder's Assistant, and Land-Office Guide
Volume 73, Page 175   View pdf image (33K)
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