Definition
Common appendant is a right to pasture one's livestock on the waste or open lands of a manor, arising automatically by operation of law from the tenure of arable land within that manor. Unlike other forms of common, it is not created by express grant or deed but attaches to the land itself by reason of the ancient relationship between the tenant and the lord of the manor. The right is limited both in the animals it covers — traditionally those necessary to tillage, such as horses and oxen — and in the number of beasts that may be turned out, which is proportioned to the needs of the arable land to which the right is attached.
Common Confusion
Common appendant is frequently confused with common appurtenant. The distinction is important. Common appendant arises by operation of law from the tenure connection between arable land and a manor; it is limited to commonable beasts of the plow and cannot support cattle other than those necessary for cultivation. Common appurtenant, by contrast, arises by express grant or prescription, may attach to non-arable land, and can extend to animals beyond those used in tillage — goats and swine being the standard examples. Researchers encountering "common" in historical deeds and pleadings must identify which form is claimed, as the legal basis and limitations differ substantially.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Common appendant belongs to the broader family of rights of common, which historically included:
- Common appurtenant: attached to land by grant or prescription, broader in scope than common appendant.
- Common in gross: a personal right not attached to any dominant tenement, held independently of land ownership.
- Common because of vicinage: a mutual right between neighboring communities to allow livestock to stray across unfenced boundaries.
- Common of turbary, piscary, and estovers: rights to cut peat, fish, and take wood respectively, distinct from pasture rights.
Common appendant is the oldest and most narrowly defined of these categories.
Why It Matters in Research
Common appendant is primarily a historical term. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in pre-twentieth-century English sources and in American materials from the colonial and early republic periods, particularly in jurisdictions that inherited English common law land tenure structures.
Several research traps are worth noting. First, the term appears in old pleading records and conveyancing documents where its technical limitations — number of beasts, species, connection to arable land — were litigated and may be determinative. A claim described simply as "common" or "right of pasture" in early documents may or may not rise to the level of common appendant; context and proof of tenure connection matter. Second, the American reception of this doctrine was uneven. Some early American courts applied the English doctrine with its full technical requirements; others treated it as inapplicable given the absence of the manorial system in the colonies. Researchers working in American jurisdictions should not assume that English rules transferred wholesale. Third, the doctrine's tie to the manorial system means it effectively became obsolete as fee simple tenure displaced copyhold and villenage. Most modern American property law has no living version of this right, and English law largely abolished it through the Commons Acts and related legislation. Its continued appearance in legal dictionaries is as a reference anchor for historical materials rather than an active legal concept.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's are in close agreement on the core definition: a right annexed to possession of arable land entitling the owner to feed beasts on the lands — specifically the wastes — of the manor. All three trace the right to the tenure relationship rather than to any grant or agreement.
Burrill adds the most structural context, noting that the right "arises from the connexion of tenure," and citing Coke on Littleton alongside Blackstone's Commentaries. This framing is important: it locates common appendant not in contract or custom but in the feudal architecture of land tenure itself, which explains both its antiquity and its obsolescence.
Bouvier provides the most useful limitation on scope, specifying that the right is annexed to arable land only and extends solely to cattle necessary for tillage — horses and oxen being the standard examples — not to sheep, goats, or other livestock. Bouvier also notes the pleading constraint: the right must be claimed by prescription rather than by way of custom, a distinction with real procedural consequences in historical litigation.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the American reception problem. None of the three sources meaningfully grapples with whether and how the doctrine applied in American jurisdictions lacking English manorial structures. Researchers should treat the historical dictionary entries as accurate for English law and as a starting point — not a conclusion — for American applications.
Jurisdictional Note
Common appendant is rooted in English feudal tenure law and has no meaningful modern application in either England or the United States. In England, commons legislation progressively regulated and extinguished these rights. In the United States, the absence of a manorial system meant courts in the early republic were divided on whether the doctrine applied at all; where pasture rights existed, they were more often grounded in express grant or prescription than in tenure-based common appendant.