Note 276 — Book VII.

“It is answered,” says the Regiam Majestatem, “that no Man may succeed to him, but only the King by the reason aforesaid.” (L. 2. c. 52.) But Bracton resolves the question by informing us, that in such a case, the Land would escheat to the Lord; nor, would the circumstance of Homage having been received, alter the case, quia homagium evanescit heredibus deficientibus ubique; (Bracton 20. b.) a doctrine which has been strangely misinterpreted, and that by a highly respectable writer, who considers the position laid down by Glanville, that the Lord was precluded by receiving Homage of his claim to the Escheat, as not to be relied upon; because, in the very next Reign, the Lord was ultimus heres to a Bastard. In support of this conjecture, the Author in question appeals to Bracton. (Ubi supra.) See Dalrymple on Feuds p. 64. Bracton wrote the Law of the times as it stood when he composed his treatise, which was not in the very next Reign, but towards the latter end of the Reign of Henry the third, the better part of a century later than when Glanville wrote. Had the fact, however, been as assumed, the conclusion drawn from it would by no means be warranted: since, to argue from what is Law at one period in order to refute what was so at another anterior period is the purest sophistry.