Odger's English Common Law

Chapter III.
PRIVATE RIGHTS : RIGHTS OF OWNERSHIP.
"We now proceed to describe private rights, and in the first
place rights of property. Property consists of land or things,
or rights in, to, or over land or things ;
rights against persons
are also, in a sense, property. Land and things are tangible
property. Eights in, to or over them are intangible property,
and so are rights against persons. Trees and growing crops,
and all buildings erected on land, are part of the land and
pass with it on any transfer of ownership. But timber, hay
and corn that is cut, are things.
Ownership is the right to hold, use and enjoy land or
things to the exclusion of every one else.
Ownership of things is older than ownership of land. No one owns the
open sea : so it was formerly with the open country. But the primitive
man recognised ownership in weapons and tools, in game killed or captured
by the weapons, and in things fashioned by the tools. 1 Then when men
gathered into towns, each family came to own its house ; each family, too,
had its burial ground ; but the land around the towns or burial places
was the common property of the tribe. This was still largely the case in
England even in Saxon times. Then the tribe became a nation, and the
land of the tribe became the land of the King, and later of his grantee,
the lord of the manor. And now all land in England is the private property
of somebody—of the King, if no one else can show a better title to it.
The King has, indeed, certain rights over all the land in the kingdom.
2 These rights are rarely of any importance ; they are but the shadowy
survivals of the fact that all the land in the country once belonged to the
State. The existence of these royal rights, however, renders it technically
inaccurate to say that any subject owns land. The King is the only
absolute owner of land in this country. Even a tenant in fee simple has
only an " estate " in his freehold land ; but this practically amounts to
ownership.
Gradually ownership came to involve further rights : the
right to alienate or dispose of the property while the owner
1 He may also be said to have regarded his wife and children as his property.
a The right of escheat is sometimes of considerable value.
B.C.L.
2