Definition
Latin: "without rendering anything therefrom." A clause used in royal or crown grants to indicate that the recipient holds the granted land or property entirely free of any rent, service, or reservation — that is, the grant carries no obligation of return to the grantor. Where this phrase appeared in a grant, it operated to confirm that the crown conveyed the property outright, without retaining any tenurial incident or rent charge running back to it.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to the specialized vocabulary of English feudal tenure and crown grant drafting, and it is almost exclusively a historical research term. Researchers encountering it will be working in early English land law, royal patent records, or colonial charter instruments. Its significance lies in what it negates: in a feudal system where nearly every grant implied some reservation — rent, fealty, services, or other incidents — a grant absque aliquo inde reddendo was a meaningful departure from the norm. The phrase signals a complete divestiture by the grantor, with no tenurial string attached.
Researchers should note that this phrase is a variant or elaboration of the shorter form absque aliquo inde reddendo, and both forms point toward the same operative legal concept. Bouvier preserves this term under the truncated Latin "dendo" as part of an abbreviation convention common in early abridgments, which can confuse researchers who encounter only the fragment in a secondary source or index. The reference to Rolle's Abridgment (2 Rolle, Abr. 502) is the primary historical anchor; researchers tracing the doctrine into case law should begin there and work outward through the English abridgment tradition.
The phrase is most likely to appear in: (1) crown grants of land in England prior to the abolition of feudal tenures by the Statute of Tenures (1660); (2) colonial charters issued by the English crown to proprietors or companies, where the presence or absence of rent reservations had significant downstream legal consequences; and (3) legal arguments about whether a grant was truly absolute or whether some reversionary interest or service obligation survived.
In corpus research, do not conflate Bouvier's compressed entry form — where he enters the term under "dendo" as if that were the headword — with the full Latin phrase. The abbreviation practice in Rolle and similar abridgments regularly drops standard prefixes and particles; researchers who search only for the compressed form may miss the full phrase in original instruments, and vice versa.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the only shelf source providing an entry, and his treatment is extremely compressed: he defines the phrase as "without reserving any rent therefrom" and identifies it as a term used in free grants by the crown, citing 2 Rolle, Abr. 502. This is a functional definition sufficient for identification but thin on doctrinal context.
Bouvier's entry sits immediately before his entry for ABSQUE HOC, which he cross-references to TRAVERSE — a reminder that the absque family of Latin phrases served varied functions in pleading and conveyancing, and that they should not be read as interchangeable. Absque aliquo inde reddendo is a conveyancing term of completeness (what is not reserved); absque hoc is a pleading term of denial (what is not admitted). The structural similarity of the Latin formulas has occasionally produced confusion in older secondary literature.
No entry for this precise phrase appears in Black's Law Dictionary in its early editions under this headword, making Bouvier the authoritative shelf source for Law Mind corpus purposes. Researchers requiring deeper treatment should consult Rolle's Abridgment directly, as well as Coke on Littleton and the broader English abridgment tradition for the law of crown grants and free tenure.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase is exclusively a term of historical English land law and has no operative significance in modern American or Commonwealth jurisdictions. Its practical research relevance is limited to pre-1660 English property law and colonial-era charter interpretation.