Note 134 — Chapter VIII · CUSTOM.

The statute of Westminster I. c. 39, imposed a limitation upon actions for the recovery of land. It provided that no such action should lie, unless the claimant or his predecessor in title had had possession of the land claimed at some time subsequent to the accession of Richard I. The previous common law rule of limitation for such actions was no other than the rule as to time immemorial. At common law the claimant had to prove his title and his seisin by the testimony of living men; therefore he or his predecessors must have been in possession within time of human memory. The enactment in question was accordingly construed as laying down a statutory definition of the term time of memory, and this supposed statutory definition was accepted by the courts as valid in all departments of the law in which the idea of time immemorial was relevant. See Blackstone, II. 31; Littleton, sect. 170.