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Updated: May 11, 2025
Privity of estate, as used in connection with covenants at common law, does not mean tenure or easement; it means succession to a title. /2/ It is never necessary between covenantor and covenantee, or any other persons, except between the present owner and the original covenantee.
The assign, as in warranty, came in under the old covenant with the first covenantee, not by any new right of his own. Thus, in an action by an assign on a covenant for further assurance, the defendant set up a release by the original covenantee after the commencement of the suit. The court held that the assignee should have the benefit of the covenant.
Some have supposed this privity to be tenure; some, an interest of the covenantee in the land of the covenantor; and so on. /1/ The first notion is false, the second misleading, and the proposition to which they are applied is unfounded.
It has already been shown that covenants for title, like warranties, went only to successors of the original covenantee. The technical expression for the rule was that they were annexed to the estate in privity. Nothing was easier than to overlook the technical use of the word "estate," and to say that such covenants went with the land.
It is evident from these pleadings that assigns were not mentioned in the covenant, and so it has always been taken. /1/ It also appears that the plaintiff was trying to stand on two grounds; first, privity, as descendant and assign of the covenantee; second, that the service was attached to the manor by covenant or by prescription, and that he could maintain covenant as tenant of the manor, from whichever source the duty arose.
But it is only by way of succession that any other person than the party to the contract can sue upon it. Hence the plaintiff must always be privy in estate with the covenantee. C. It is impossible, however, to tell by general reasoning what rights will be held in English law to belong to the former class, or where the line will be drawn between the two.
It was held that he could not recover, because he was not privy in estate with the original covenantee. For the lease, which was the original covenantee's estate, was ended by the death of the lessor and termination of the estate tail out of which the lease was granted, before the form of assignment to the plaintiff. /1/
It would aid our studies if we could say that wherever assigns are to get the benefit of a covenant as privies in estate with the covenantee, they must be mentioned in the covenant. Whether such a requirement does exist or not would be hard to tell from the decisions alone. It is commonly supposed not to.
The question raised by the pleadings, therefore, was whether the heir of the covenantee could sue without being tenant of the manor. If the covenant was to be approached from the side of contract, the heir was party to it as representing the covenantee.
Pakenham brought covenant as heir of the covenantee against a prior, for breach of a covenant made by the defendant's predecessor with the plaintiff's great-grandfather, that the prior and convent should sing every week in a chapel in his manor, for him and his servants.
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