Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/52

 40 the free fihery is an excluive right, the common of picary is not o: and therefore, in a free fihery, a man has a property in the fih before they are caught; in a common of picary, not till afterwards. Some indeed have conidered a free fihery not as a royal franchie, but merely as a private grant of a liberty to fih in the everal fihery of the grantor. But the conidering uch right as originally a flower of the prerogative, till retrained by magna carta, and derived by royal grant (previous to the reign of Richard I.) to uch as now claim it by precription, may remove ome difficulties in repect to this matter, with which our books are embaraed.

VIII. are a right of utenance, or to receive certain allotments of victual and proviion for one's maintenance. In lieu of which (epecially when due from eccleiatical perons) a penion or um of money is ometimes ubtituted. And thee may be reckoned another pecies of incorporeal hereditaments; though not chargeable on, or iuing from, any corporeal inheritance, but only charged on the peron of the owner in repect of uch his inheritance. To thee may be added,

IX. , which are much of the ame nature; only that thee arie from temporal, as the former from piritual, perons. An annuity is a thing very ditinct from a rent-charge, with which it is frequently confounded: a rent-charge being a burthen impoed upon and iuing out of lands, whereas an annuity is a yearly um chargeable only upon the peron of the grantor. Therefore, if a man by deed grant to another the um of 20𝑙. per annum, without expreing out of what lands it hall iue, no land at all hall be charged with it; but it is a mere peronal annuity: which is of o little account in the law, that, if granted to an eleemoynary corporation, it is not within the tatutes of mortmain ; and yet a man may have a real etate in it, though his ecurity is merely peronal. Rh