Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/275

 Ch. 16. eems to have been recurring to firt principles, and calling in the law of nature to acertain the property of the land, when left without a legal owner. For it did not revert to the grantor; who had parted with all his interet, o long as cetuy que vie lived: it did not echeat to the lord of the fee; for all echeats mut be of the abolute entire fee, and not of any particular etate carved out of it; much les of o minute a remnant as this: it did not belong to the grantee; for he was dead: it did not decend to his heirs; for there were no words of inheritance in the grant: nor could it vet in his executors; for no executors could ucceed to a freehold. Belonging therefore to nobody, like the haereditas jacens of the Romans, the law left it open to be eied and appropriated by the firt peron that could enter upon it, during the life of cetuy que vie, under the name of an occupant. But there was no right of occupancy allowed, where the king had the reverion of the lands; for the reverioner hath an equal right with any other man to enter upon the vacant poeion, and where the king's title and a ubject's concur, the king's hall be always preferred: againt the king therefore there could be no prior occupant, becaue nullum tempus occurrit regi. And, even in the cae of a ubject, had the etate pur auter vie been granted to a man and his heirs during the life of cetuy que vie, there the heir might, and till may, enter and hold poeion, and is called in law a pecial occupant; as having a pecial excluive right, by the terms of the original grant, to enter upon and occupy this haereditas jacens, during the reidue of the etate granted: though ome have thought him o called with no very great propriety ; and that uch etate is rather a decendible freehold. But the title of common occupancy is now reduced almot to nothing by two tatutes; the one, 29 Car. II. c. 3. which enacts, that where there is no pecial occupant, in whom the etate may vet, the tenant pur auter vie may devie it by will, or it hall go to the executors and be aets in their hands for payment of debts: the other that of 14 Geo. II. c. 20. which enacts, that it hall vet not only in the Rh