Dictionaries of the Scots Language
Dictionars o the Scots Leid

Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

Hide Quotations Hide Etymology

Abbreviations Cite this entry

About this entry:
First published 1968 (SND Vol. VII).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

RECOGNITION, n. Sc. Law: the feudal casualty whereby, in ward tenure, a vassal was liable to forfeit his land to his superior, if he alienated half or more of it without his superior's consent (Sc. 1825 Jam., 1946 A. D. Gibb Legal Terms 73). Abolished by the Heritable Jurisdiction Act of 1746 and now only hist.Sc. 1708 Rights & Liberties Commons Gt. Brit. (Pamphlet) 4:
If the Vassal Sells or Mortgages the half of his Lands without the Superiour's consent, the whole Lands fall to the Superiour for ever. This Casualty is call'd Recognition, which takes place in Tax-ward as well as Simple-ward.Sc. 1725 Morison Decisions 13397:
A declarator of recognition differs little from a common declarator of irritancy.Sc. 1747 Act 20 Geo. II. c.50 § 1:
The Tenure of Lands in . . . Scotland, by Ward Holding, and the consequences of the same, being the Casualties of Ward Marriage and Recognition.Sc. 1773 Erskine Institute ii. v. § 10:
Recognition, though ranked by some writers among the casualties of superiority, was indeed a total forfeiture of the fee; since the vassal who incurred it fell from the whole lands contained in his grant. . . . But the term came afterwards to be used in a more limited signification, to express that special casualty by which the fee returned to the superior in consequence of the alienation made by the vassal of the greatest part of it to a stranger, without the superior's consent.Sc. 1814 J. Sinclair Agric. Scot. I. 188:
Still another very intolerable casualty attended this holding, termed Recognition, by which, on the sale of more than one half of the feu, the whole, both what was sold and what was retained, became forfeited to the superior.