19 Jan Lordship Titles – Land or Personal Property? Part 3 and 4

The Law Commission’s Definition of a Manor:

LAND REGISTRATION FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

A CONSULTATIVE DOCUMENT;

“The position of manors requires special consideration. By “manor” we mean

specifically the lordship of a manor and not other seignorial rights (which are subject

to quite different considerations). 49 The manorial rights of a lord of the manor are

wholly incorporeal 50 and may be (and commonly are) owned separately from the land

that was comprised in the manor. They impose no burden on any land within the

manor and they are therefore “land” only in the most abstract sense.51 Although a

manor may be registered with its own title,52 the experience of the Land Registry

suggests that this is no longer appropriate. The position of manors is closely analogous

to that of another type of incorporeal hereditament, namely advowsons. 53 For the

purposes of the Land Registration Act 1925, these are no longer regarded as land.54 We

consider that manors should be treated in the same way. We provisionally

recommend that, for the purposes of the Land Registration Act, manors

should cease to be regarded as land. Do readers agree?”

You will see that a clear distinction is made between rights against land and the lordship, this informed the Land Registration Act 2002 which closed the Lordship Register with HM Land Registry.

Lordship Titles – Land or Personal Property? Part 4:

It is important to understand the distinction between personal property and land property as different law applies.  The uninformed have been applying the law relating to physical land to lordships.

So we must look to personal property and the incorporeal law that applies to that.  Most incorporeal personal property is protected by either companies’ records or the Intellectual Property Office (where registration is available).  The law never rests and continues to grow as the complexity of our lives grows.  We cannot tell where legislation will go, however there seems to be a trend for introducing law to cover modern issues and old legal rights are considered.  There are themes that have not changed, the Crowns power to take up property that is not owned (the reality being they only take up what is profitable to take up) and that proof of ownership becomes less “possession is 9/10^th’s of the law” and proof of ownership is paramount.  Old habits die hard to many people’s cost.  We find ourselves buying personal property from the possessor and trusting they came by the goods in a legal way.  With incorporeal property this is extremely dangerous.  The seller cannot hand you the goods, the only proof of their ownership will be a paper trail.

At Manorial Counsel we have clear procedures in place that ensure we sell the newly created legal rights that we state we do.  In addition to our solicitor who will confirm the titles have been conveyed to you, we also ask two further solicitor’s firms to confirm the rights exist and are in Manorial Counsel ownership.  Let us emphasise to you again Manorial Counsel create new legal rights based on original lordships (personal property) that have no proof of ownership.  It is impossible to tell who owner would be, in the same way if money is found in the street.

So why not leave the lordships alone, never to be legally used again?  That is easily answered when you read through the histories of the lordship titles we have for sale.  Whilst unable to access the lost proof of ownership of the original lordship Manorial Counsel can use modern law to create a new right based on the old one.  Thus bringing back into use the lordship title and therefore keeping our rich history alive.

To be continued...