Amerce - To impose a fine. Also to publish by fine or penalty.

Assize - A court, usually but not always, consisting of twelve men, summoned together to try a disputed case. They performed the functions of jury, except the verdict was rendered from their own investigation and knowledge and not from upon evidence adduced.

BEN'EFICE, noun [Latin beneficium.]

1. Literally, a benefit, advantage or kindness. But in present usage, en ecclesiastical living; a church endowed with a revenue, for the maintenance of divine service, or the revenue itself. All church preferments are called benefices, except bishoprics, which are called dignities. But ordinarily, the term dignity is applied to bishoprics, deaneries, arch-deaconries, and prebendaries; and benefice to parsonages, vicarages, and donatives.

2. In the middle ages, benefice was used for a fee, or an estate in lands, granted at first for like only, and held ex mero beneficio of the donor. The estate afterwards becoming hereditary, took the appellation of feud, and benefice became appropriated to church livings. (Merriam Websters 1828)

eccles. law. In its most extended sense, any ecclesiastical preferment or dignity; but in its more limited sense, it is applied only to rectories and vicarages.  (Bouvier's 1856 edition)

Burage - One of three species of free socage holdings. A tenure where houses and lands formerly the site of houses in an ancient borough are held of some lord by a certain rent.

Chattel - Personal property as opposed to real property. A personal object which can be transported.

COMMON. or right of common, English law. An encorporeal hereditament, which consists in a profit which a man has in the lands of another. 12 S. & R. 32; 10 Wend. R. 647; 11 John. R. 498; 2 Bouv. Inst. 1640, et seq.

2. Common is of four sorts; of pasture, piscary, turbary and estovers. Finch's Law, 157; Co. Litt. 122; 2 Inst. 86; 2 Bl. Com. 32.

3. - 1. Common of pasture is a right of feeding one's beasts on another's land, and is either appendant, appurtenant, or in gross.

4. Common appendant is of common right, and it may be claimed in pleading as appendant, without laying a prescription. Hargr. note to 2 Inst. 122, a note.

5. Rights of common appurtenant to the claimant's land are altogether independent of the tenure, and do not arise from any absolute necessity; but may be annexed to lands in other lordships, or extended to other beasts besides. such as are generally commonable.

6. Common in gross, or at large, is such as is neither appendant nor appurtenant to land, but is annexed to a man's person. All these species of pasturable common, may be and usually are limited to number and time; but there are also commons without stint, which last all the year. 2 Bl. Com. 34.

7. - 2. Common of piscary is the liberty of fishing in another man's water. lb. See Fishery.

8. - 3. Common of turbary is the liberty of digging turf in another man's ground. Ib.

9.-4. Common of estovers is the liberty of taking necessary wood-for the use or furniture of a house or farm from another man's estate. Ib.; 10 Wend. R. 639. See Estovers.

10. The right of common is little known in the United States, yet there are some regulations to be found in relation to this subject. The constitution of Illinois provides for the continuance of certain commons in that state. Const. art. 8, s. 8.

11. All unappropriated lands on the Chesapeake Bay, on the Shore of the sea, or of any river or creek, and the bed of any river or creek, in the eastern parts of the commonwealth, ungranted and used as common, it is declared by statute in Virginia, shall remain so, and not be subject to grant. 1 Virg. Rev. C. 142.

12. In most of the cities and towns in the United States, there are considerable tracts of land appropriated to public use. These commons were generally laid out with the cities or towns where they are found, either by the original proprietors or by the early inhabitants. Vide 2 Pick. Rep. 475; 12 S. & R. 32; 2 Dane's. Ab. 610; 14 Mass. R. 440; 6 Verm. 355. See, in general, Vin. Abr. Common; Bac. Abr. Common; Com. Dig. Common; Stark. Ev. part 4, p. 383; Cruise on Real Property, h. t.; Metc. & Perk. Dig. Common, and Common lands and General fields.

COMMON LAW. That which derives its force and authority from the universal consent and immemorial practice of the people. See Law, common. (Bouvier's 1856 edition)

COURT. In International Law The person and suite of the sovereign; the place where the sovereign sojourns with his regal retinue, wherever that may be. Black's Law Dictionary 2nd Edition

COURT OF ADMIRALTY. A court having jurisdiction of all maritime causes. Vide Admiralty; Courts of the United States; Instance Courts; Prize Court; 2 Chit. Pr. 508 to 538. (Bouvier's 1856 edition)

Darrein Presentment - Writ of Assize when a man or his ancestors under whom he claimed presented a clerk to a benefice, who was instituted, and afterwards, upon the next avoidance, a stranger presented a clerk and thereby disturbed the real patron.

Distrain - The act of taking as a pledge another's property to be used as an assurance of performance of an obligation. Also a remedy to ensure a court appearance or payment of fees etc.

Disseise - To dispossess or to deprive.

Escheat - Right of the lord of a fee to re-enter upon the same when it became vacant by the extinction of the blood of the tenant.

INTERNATIONAL LAW. A league or agreement between two or more independent states whereby they unite for their mutual welfare and the furtherance of their common aims. The term may apply to a union so formed for a temporary or limited purpose, as in the case of an offensive and defensive alliance ; but it is more commonly used to denote that species of political connection between two or more independent states by which a central government is created, invested with certain powers of sovereignty, (mostly external,) and acting upon the several component states as its units, which, however, retain their sovereign powers for domestic purposes and some others. Black's Law Dictionary 2nd. Edition

Intestate - To die without a will.

Mort d'Ancestor - Real action to recover a person's lands of which he had been deprived on the death of his ancestor by the abatement of intrusion of a stranger.

Novel Disseisin - Writ of Assize for the recovery of lands and tenements.

Peer - One who is a member of the peerage, i.e. the nobility. A jury of your peers is a jury of your nobility. In America everyone is a king without any subjects, so a jury of your peers means a jury of people, the owners of the country (not citizens, who by 14th Amendment constitutional definition, are all publicly owned slaves).

Praecipe - An original writ drawn up in the alternative commanding the defendant to do the thing required. An order to show cause.

Regulation - The act of regulating; a rule or order prescribed for management or government; a regulating principle; a precept. See Curry v. Marvin, 2 Fla. 415; Ames v. Union Pac. Ry. Co. (C. C.) 64 Fed. 178; Hunt v. Lambertville, 45 N. J. Law, 282.

Scutage - Tax or contribution raised by someone holding lands by knight's service used to furnish the King's army.

Socage - A species of Tenure where the tenant held lands in consideration of certain inferior services of husbandry by him to the lord of the fee.

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