Definition
Innocent conveyances is a term of English conveyancing law referring to those transfers of a leasehold interest that a tenant could execute without triggering a forfeiture of the lease. Because certain conveyancing acts by a tenant were treated as a breach of the tenant's obligations — causing the leasehold estate to be forfeited to the landlord — the law recognized a category of transfers that achieved the transfer of property interests without that consequence. The recognized innocent conveyances were: (1) lease and release, (2) bargain and sale, and (3) for a tenant holding a life estate, a covenant to stand seised. Each of these operated under the Statute of Uses or related equitable mechanisms rather than as a direct common-law conveyance, allowing the transfer to take effect in equity or by statute rather than by the act of livery of seisin, which would have constituted a tortious alienation and triggered forfeiture.
Common Confusion
The word "innocent" here does not mean free from wrongdoing in a moral or criminal sense. It means harmless to the tenant's existing interest — i.e., not working a forfeiture. A researcher encountering this term in historical sources should resist reading it through the lens of modern usage, where "innocent" most naturally signals absence of guilt or knowledge. The term is a technical term of art from English real property law with no meaningful moral content.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively relevant to historical research in English property law and early American conveyancing practice. Several points of navigational importance:
First, the doctrine is tightly bound to the pre-Statute of Frauds and pre-Land Transfer Act conveyancing system. Researchers working in English sources prior to the late nineteenth century — and in American sources from the colonial period through the early republic — may encounter it in treatises, deeds, and equity proceedings. It effectively disappears from American legal literature as fee simple conveyancing became standardized and the technical distinctions between types of conveyance were abolished.
Second, the term appears almost exclusively in conveyancing treatises and practice manuals rather than in case reporters. Chitty's Practical Treatise on Pleading (1 Chitty, Pr. 243) is the common citation anchor in both Black's and Bouvier's, and researchers should treat that citation as the authoritative primary reference rather than expecting judicial development of the doctrine.
Third, the concept is relevant to understanding why historical deeds were structured as they were. The choice of a bargain-and-sale deed or a lease-and-release form, rather than a feoffment with livery of seisin, was not arbitrary — it was often a deliberate selection of an innocent conveyance to protect the grantor from forfeiture or to avoid other collateral consequences. Researchers analyzing historical chain-of-title documents need to understand this structural logic.
Fourth, the doctrine has no surviving operational relevance in modern American property law. Researchers who encounter the term in a contemporary source should treat that usage as either historical quotation or anachronism.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement on this term — a notable consistency that reflects the settled and narrow scope of the doctrine even by the time both dictionaries were compiled. Both identify the same three forms (lease and release, bargain and sale, covenant to stand seised), both limit the covenant-to-stand-seised form to life tenants, and both cite the same passage in Chitty. Neither dictionary offers significant elaboration beyond definition, which itself signals that the term was already largely a historical artifact when these dictionaries were written. Neither source addresses any American statutory modification or abolition of the relevant common-law rules, leaving the researcher to infer that the term was included for completeness in covering historical English law rather than as a guide to living doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
This doctrine is a product of English common law and has no counterpart in modern American statutory property law. It was absorbed into early American conveyancing practice in jurisdictions that followed English common law, but the technical distinctions between forms of conveyance on which it depended were progressively eliminated by state recording acts and deed reform statutes throughout the nineteenth century.