It will soon appear that they have. And not to
be too careful about the order of proof, I will first take up the
joinder of times in prescription, as that has just been so fully
discussed. The English law of the subject is found on examination
to be the same as the Roman in extent, reason, and expression. It
is indeed largely copied from that source. For servitudes, such
as rights of way, light, and the like, form the chief class of
prescriptive rights, and our law of servitudes is mainly Roman.
Prescriptions, it is said, "are properly personal, and therefore
are always alleged in the person of him who prescribes, viz. that
he and all those whose estate he hath, &c.; therefore, a bishop
or a parson may prescribe, ... for there is a perpetual estate,
and a perpetual succession and the successor hath the very same
estate which his predecessor had, for that continues, though the
person alters, like the case of the ancestor and the heir." /1/
So in a modern case, where by statute twenty years' dispossession
extinguished the owner's title, the Court of Queen's Bench said
that probably the right would be transferred to the possessor "if
the same person, or several persons, claiming one from the other
by descent, will [368] or conveyance, had been in possession for
the twenty years.
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