Steven Till

Disseisin
Etymology: Middle English dysseysyne, from Anglo-French disseisine, from disseisir

1) Dispossession of land.
(Sayles, George O. The King’s Parliament of England, 144)

2) The act of wrongfully depriving a person of the seisin of lands, rents, or other hereditaments, as where a man not having right of entry on certain lands or tenements enters upon them and ousts him who has the freehold.
(Warren, W.L. Henry II, 633)

From the Statuta de Mercatoribus (Statutes of Merchants), 11 Edw. I (1283) & 13 Edw. I (1285):

And if he do not agree within the quarter next after the quarter expired, all the lands and goods of the debtor shall be delivered unto the merchant by a reasonable extent, to hold them until such time as the debt is wholly levied; and nevertheless the body shall remain in prison as before is said; and the merchant shall find him bread and water; and the merchant shall have such seisin in the lands and tenements delivered unto him, or his assignee, that he may maintain a writ of novel disseisin, if he be put out, and re-disseisin also, as of freehold, to hold to him and his assigns until the debt be paid; and as soon as the debt is levied the body of the debtor shall be delivered with his lands. And in such writs as the Chancellor does award mention shall be made, that the sheriff shall certify the justices of the one bench or of the other, how he has performed the Kings Commandment, at a certain day; at which day the merchant shall sue before the justices, if agreement be not made; and if the sheriffs do not return the writ, or do return that the writ came too late, or that he has directed it to the bailiffs of some franchise, the justices shall do as it is contained in the latter statute of Westminster.

*term definitions retrieved from Netserf’s Medieval Glossary (http://www.netserf.org/Glossary)

Filed under: Middle Ages History, Medieval Glossary, Medieval History on October 16th, 2009