Definition
A statutory penalty requiring a tenant to pay twice the normal rent when the tenant holds over in possession after giving notice of intent to quit but then fails to vacate on the date specified in that notice. The obligation attaches from the moment the tenant's self-declared departure date passes without actual departure and continues until the tenant actually surrenders possession.
Double rent is distinct from ordinary holdover liability. It is not triggered merely by a landlord's notice or the expiration of a lease term — it requires that the tenant have given notice of quitting and then refused or failed to leave. The tenant's own notice is the triggering instrument.
The doctrine originates in the English statute 11 George II, c. 19 (1737), which created the double rent remedy as a response to a specific abuse: tenants who gave notice to quit to create leverage or to obtain concessions, then remained in possession without consequence.
---
Common Confusion
Double rent is frequently conflated with two related but distinct holdover doctrines. First, double value — a separate English statutory remedy available to landlords when a tenant holds over after the landlord has demanded possession — imposes double the annual value of the premises rather than double the reserved rent. Second, ordinary holdover liability, which arises when a tenant remains after a lease expires without any notice by either party, carries no automatic statutory doubling. The specific trigger for double rent (a tenant's own notice to quit, followed by failure to vacate) is narrow and distinguishes it from both of these neighboring concepts.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century American landlord-tenant materials must approach double rent carefully for several reasons.
First, the doctrine has a highly uneven reception in American jurisdictions. Bouvier notes explicitly that while New York and some other states re-enacted the substance of the English statute, the remedy was not generally adopted across the country. Many American courts operated without any statutory double rent rule at all, resolving tenant holdovers through common law principles or their own landlord-tenant acts. A researcher assuming universal adoption of this remedy will reach incorrect conclusions.
Second, the term appears in English sources with some frequency through the nineteenth century, and American legal writers sometimes cited it approvingly without indicating whether the relevant jurisdiction had actually adopted the statute. Cross-referencing Bouvier's caution about limited American adoption against the jurisdiction actually at issue is essential before drawing any conclusions from secondary sources.
Third, modern American landlord-tenant law has largely displaced this specific mechanism. Contemporary statutes in many states impose holdover liability through different frameworks — some based on month-to-month conversion, some on landlord election to treat the holdover as a trespass, some with their own penalty rent provisions. A researcher encountering "double rent" in a modern American context should verify whether the applicable statute actually uses that terminology and that mechanism, or whether a functionally similar but structurally different rule applies.
Fourth, the interplay between double rent and rent control or stabilization regimes in jurisdictions that adopted the former warrants attention. Where regulated rent levels are in place, the base for calculating "double" rent may be constrained or contested.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's are in agreement on the core definition and share the same statutory anchor: 11 George II, c. 19. Bouvier provides meaningfully more navigational context, adding the Fawcett landlord-and-tenant treatise citation and, crucially, the observation that American adoption was selective rather than universal.
Neither source addresses the relationship between double rent and double value, which are distinct remedies under English law. Researchers relying solely on these dictionary entries may not realize that the two penalties had different triggers, different bases of calculation, and somewhat different histories. The absence of this distinction in the historical entries is a gap worth flagging when working with English or early American sources that deploy both terms without clearly differentiating them.
Neither dictionary addresses what happens in jurisdictions that partially adopted the English statute — whether, for example, notice requirements were modified, or whether judicial interpretation expanded or contracted the remedy. For American practice, treatises and state-specific statutory histories fill gaps that these dictionary definitions leave open.
---
Jurisdictional Note
Double rent as a distinct statutory remedy is primarily a creature of English law and those American states that affirmatively adopted it, with New York being the clearest historical example. In jurisdictions that did not adopt the English statute, holdover tenants who gave notice and failed to vacate were generally subject only to ordinary holdover liability under common law or local statute. Modern researchers should verify current statutory text; the phrase "double rent" may appear in some state codes but be absent from others that achieve similar results through different mechanisms.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia: Landlord-Tenant — Rent Control and Rent Stabilization (State and Local)
---