assage in the Paston Letters (vol. ii. p. 23) it appears
that, far from these acts being regarded, it was considered as a mark of
respect to the king, when he came into a county, for the noblemen and
gentry to meet him with as many attendants in livery as they could
muster. Sir John Paston was to provide twenty men in their livery-gowns,
and the duke of Norfolk two hundred. This illustrates the well-known
story of Henry VII. and the earl of Oxford, and shows the mean and
oppressive conduct of the king in that affair, which Hume has pretended
to justify.

In the first of Edward IV. it is said in the roll of parliament (vol. v.
p. 407), that, "by yeving of liveries and signets, contrary to the
statutes and ordinances made aforetyme maintenaunce of quarrels,
extortions, robberies, murders been multiplied and continued within this
reame, to the grete disturbaunce and inquietation of the same."

[388] Thus to select one passage out of many: Eodem anno (1332) quidam
maligni, fulti quorundam magnatum praesidio, regis adolescentiam
spernentes, et regnum perturbare intendentes, in tantam turbam
creverunt, nemora et saltus occupaverunt, ita quod toti regno terrori
essent. Walsingham, p. 132.

[389] I am aware that in many, probably a great majority of reported
cases, this word was technically used, where some unwarranted
conveyance, such as a feoffment by the tenant for life, was held to have
wrought a disseisin; or where the plaintiff was allowed, for the purpose
of a more convenient remedy, to feign himself disseised, which was
called disseisin by election. But several proofs might be brought from
the parliamentary petitions, and I doubt not, if nearly looked at, from
the Year-books, that in other cases there was an actual and violent
expulsion. And the definition of disseisin in all the old writers, such
as Britton and Littleton, is obviously framed upon its primary meaning
of violent dispossession, which the word had probably acquired long
before the more peaceable disseisins, if I may use the expression,
became the subject of the remedy by assise.

I would speak with deference of Lord Mansfield's elaborate judgment in
Taylor dem. Atkins v. Horde, 1 Burrow, 107, &c.; but some positions in
it appear to me rather too strongly stated; and particularly that the
acceptance of the disseisor as tenant by the lord was necessary to
render the disseisin complete; a condition which I have not found hinted
in any law-book. See Butler