Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/550

 544 LIVERY OF SEISIN LIVINGSTON itself, in the presence of the peers of the lord's court, and originally by merely personal acts, without writing. The possession which com- plete investiture gave to the vassal was called his seisin, and this delivery of it by the superior was the livery of seisin. The design of the ceremony was to notify the transmission of the fee from one hand to another. For the lord, the peers of his court could bear witness to the obligations of servitude which the vassal had assumed, and to the conditions and limitation of the gift, if any had been annexed to it. For the tenant, they could testify to the fact of the grant in the event of a dispute respecting the freehold, and in other respects their testimony sufficed to assure his rights. But to make the evidence of these rights more certain, and to define more exactly the conditions of the fact, writings came to be introduced, declaring the tenor and terms of the investiture. In the general feudal law, such writings were called orwia testata; that is to say, short written memoranda, attested by witnesses. They bore no date, nor were they executed or sealed by the parties themselves ; their authority rested altogether in the testimony of the witnesses. When then, in England, some more precise evi- dence of the agreement between lord and ten- ant had come to be required than the mere parol testimony of the peers of the court, these brevia testata, were imitated, and a charter of feoffment was executed and delivered to the new possessor of the lands, at the same time with the livery of seisin. This charter of feoff- ment was the evidence of the gift or grant, and the livery of seisin was only the transfer of the possession. Livery was of two kinds : livery in deed, and livery in law. The former was made,, in the words of Sir E. Coke, " by delivery of the ring or haspe of the doore, or of a branch or twigge of a tree, or of a turf e of the land, and with these or the like words, the feoffor and feoffee both holding the deed of feoffment and the ring or haspe, and the feoffor saying : ' Here I deliver you seisin and possession of this house, in the name of all the lands and tene- ments contained in this deed, according to the form and effect of the deed.' " Livery in law was not upon the land, but in sight of it, and the feoffee's title was not good until the livery was perfected by his actual entry upon the land during the feoffor's life. These charters of feoffment which accompanied livery of seisin were in early times but rarely signed. Sealing however became common and nearly universal, and imported the assent of parties to the instru- ment thus attested. This custom of affixing a seal remained long after the occasion for it had passed away, and founded the present rules of law in this respect. As these written charters or deeds (for they are nothing else) became more perfect, the more formal ceremonies of investiture were dispensed with. The doctrine of seisin, however, maintained its place in the English law until very lately. In respect to descents its importance was modified by the statute 3 and 4 William IV. ; and in regard to conveyances, lands might still be conveyed by a verbal contract alone, provided it was attended with public delivery of possession, until the latter part of the reign of Charles II., when the statute of frauds and perjuries enacted that there must be thenceforth some evidence in writing to support the grant. (See FEAUDS, STATUTE OF.) Livery of seisin is entirely for- eign to the American system of conveyances. A deed properly executed and delivered gives seisin in deed without entry ; nor is the entry of an heir required to give him actual seisin. LIVIA DRUSILLA, the wife of the emperor Augustus, born in 56 or 54 B. C., died in A. D. 29. She was the daughter of Livius Drusus, and was married first to Tiberius Claudius Nero, who, having fought against Octavius in the Perusinian war, was afterward compelled to divorce his beautiful wife in favor of the victorious triumvir. She had already borne her husband the future emperor Tiberius, and a few months after her second marriage she bore another son, Drusus. She retained the affections of the emperor, by whom she had no children, till his death, owing to her fidelity, fascinating manners, and indulgence of conju- gal derelictions on his part. She was skilled in the arts of dissimulation, and stands accused of having caused by foul means the deaths of various persons of the family of her husband who stood in the way of the succession of her own children. She was even suspected of hav- ing hastened by poison the death of Augustus himself. On the accession of Tiberius, when she believed she had finally attained the aim of her desires, imperial sway, she soon learned that she had misunderstood the disposition of her son, whose jealousy removed her from the court, and whose hatred was manifested even after her death. LIVINGSTON, the name of six counties in the United States. I. A W. county of New York, watered by the Genesee river and a number of creeks; area, 509 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 38,309. Its surface is an upland, rolling in the north and hilly in the south, and its soil is of exceeding fertility. It contains Conesus and Hemlock lakes, and mineral springs at Avon, a well known watering place. It is traversed by the Genesee Valley canal and by the Buffalo and the Rochester divisions of the Erie rail- way, the Dansville and Mt. Morris branch, and the Canandaigua, Batavia, and Towanda divi- sion of the New York Central railroad. The chief productions in 1870 were 947,489 bush- els of wheat, 579,313 of Indian corn, 779,189 of oats, 465,365 of barley, 42,140 of buck- wheat, 313,274 of potatoes, 605,341 Ibs. of wool, 72,140 of flax, 155,703 of hops, 1,069,- 300 of butter, 39,322 of cheese, and 72,757 tons of hay. There were 11,599 horses, 11,- 109 milch cows, 15,689 other cattle, 113,933 sheep, and 10,504 swine; 16 manufactories of agricultural implements, 3 of brooms and wisp brushes, 29 of carriages and wagons, 12 of