Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/174

138 138 HARVARD LAW REVIEW The Statute of 32 Henry VIII, c. 2, § 3, limited real actions by providing that if the claimant rested his title on the ground of former seisin by himself, he was Hmited to a seisin within thirty years before the teste or date of the original writ, as regards both droitural and possessory actions; if on the ground of a seisin by his ancestor, to a seisin within fifty years as regards possessory actions, and within sixty years as regards droitural actions.^" The demand- ant in a writ of right must allege and prove seisin in his ancestor within sixty years. Hence seisin that could be traced back sixty years became a good root of title.^^ This was for the reason that no older seisin which had been lost could be resorted to.^^ Coke says, in his note to Littleton,^^ "Limitation, as it is taken in law, is a certaine time prescribed by statute, within which the demandant in the action must prove himseLfe or some of his ancestors to be seised." The limitation of 32 Henry VIII is whoUy referable to seisin, the statute requiring a seisin within a certain time according to the nature of the writ. The limitation is dated from the seisin, not from the disseisin. The operation of the older statutes is thus not to bar the action, but to bar the source of title or right to which the more recent tortious seisin could be made to jdeld. The Statute 21 Jac. I, c. 16 (1623), adopts the modern method of limiting the right of entry, and so the action of ejectment, to within twenty years next after the right of entry accrues. The right of entry does not accrue until some one initiates an adverse possession.^* The effect of limiting all right of action to recover possession is much the same as that of expressly limiting seisin as a source of title; possession exercised continuously and adversely for a certain time becomes a source of title superior in ejectment to any title derived from an older possession. The Statute of 21 James I, c. 16 (1623), however, did no more than bar or take away the right of entry and ejectment after twenty years, but left open " I Spence, Eq. Jitr. 255; 2 P. & M. Hist. Eng. Law, 81. " 3 Black. Comm., 189, 196, 197; Dumsday v. Hughes, 3 Bing. N. C. 439, 452 (1837). " 1 Hayes, Conveyancing, 232. " Coke on Litt., § 170, note 115 a. " Agency Co. v. Short, 13 A. C. 793 (1888); Norton v. Frederick, 107 Minn. 36, 119 N. W. 492 (1909).