Definition
A covenant formula appearing in early English and American conveyancing instruments by which a grantor warranted that the grantee would enjoy the conveyed property free from disturbance, interference, or legal challenge by any person. The full phrase — typically rendered as "without interruption of any person whatsoever" or "without any interruption" — functioned as a warranty of quiet enjoyment, binding the grantor to defend the grantee's possession against all claimants, without exception as to the source or identity of any potential challenger.
The phrase is not a standalone legal concept but a term of art embedded within covenant language. Its legal significance derived from the breadth of the warranty it expressed: by promising freedom from interruption by "any person whatsoever," the grantor extended the warranty beyond the grantor's own acts to encompass third-party disturbances, including those arising from superior title.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Interruption" means a break or pause in continuity; the act of stopping something temporarily. "Whatsoever" is an emphatic form of "whatever," meaning of any kind at all.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Interruption" — the act of interrupting or breaking in upon; a stop or hindrance caused by breaking in upon the course or current of anything. "Whatsoever" — whatever; of any kind; used to strengthen the meaning of a negative or universal statement.
The gap between common and legal meaning is structural, not definitional. Individually, both words carry their ordinary senses into the legal phrase. The legal significance lies in the cumulative effect of the full formula: embedded within a deed covenant, "without interruption of any person whatsoever" was not mere description but a legally operative promise with enforceable consequences for breach. The words "whatsoever" did specific work — they foreclosed arguments that the warranty applied only to the grantor's own future interference.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this phrase in historical deeds, conveyances, or covenant disputes should treat it as a term of art embedded in the law of covenants running with the land, not as freestanding vocabulary. Several navigational points:
**Corpus placement.** The phrase appears almost exclusively in historical conveyancing instruments — warranty deeds, indentures, and leases — and in reported cases construing breach of covenant for quiet enjoyment. It will not appear in modern drafting with this exact form; contemporary instruments use simplified warranty language or statutory short-form covenants.
**The "without any interruption" variant.** Rapalje & Lawrence cross-references the variant "WITHOUT ANY INTERRUPTION" to 3 East 491, an English King's Bench report. Researchers should be aware that both formulations ("without any interruption" and "without interruption of any person whatsoever") appeared in instruments of the same period and courts treated them as functionally synonymous, though litigation occasionally turned on the precise wording.
**Breadth of warranty.** The phrase "of any person whatsoever" was the operative expansion. Courts were asked to determine whether such language extended a grantor's covenant to cover disturbances arising from paramount title held by third parties — a contested question in early American property law. The answer varied by jurisdiction and instrument, making the exact wording of the covenant critical to research outcomes.
**Constructive eviction vs. physical interruption.** Historical courts debated whether "interruption" required actual physical disturbance of possession or whether legal process — such as an adverse ejectment action — sufficed to trigger the covenant. Researchers should not assume modern quiet enjoyment doctrine maps cleanly onto historical interpretations of this phrase.
**Source limitation.** This phrase appears in Rapalje & Lawrence under abbreviated cross-reference entries, not as a fully developed definition. The entry functions as an index pointer to primary sources rather than a doctrinal explanation. Researchers must proceed to the underlying authorities — particularly the East Reports — to recover the substantive legal content.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence treat this phrase economically, listing it alongside cognate formulations ("EVER, in a covenant" and "WITHOUT ANY INTERRUPTION, in a covenant") as cross-references to Comyn's Digest and the East Reports. The entry for "INTERRUPTION, WITHOUT ANY" cites 3 East 491; the companion entry for "EVER" cites 3 Com. Dig. 274. This structure reflects the dictionary's general method for covenant terms of art: flag the formula, point to the leading authority, and leave doctrinal development to the treatise literature.
No independent definition is offered in Rapalje & Lawrence. This is characteristic of the dictionary's approach to stock conveyancing phrases — the assumption being that practitioners encountering such language in instruments would proceed directly to Comyn's Digest or the reporters for interpretive guidance.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is any systematic treatment of how American courts adapted these English covenant formulas after independence, particularly where state recording acts and statutory warranty forms altered the common-law framework. Researchers working in American jurisdictions after the mid-nineteenth century should treat Rapalje & Lawrence's citations as English-law anchors requiring supplementation with domestic authority.
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Jurisdictional Note
This phrase is English in origin and was transplanted into American conveyancing practice through colonial and early republican deed forms. American states progressively replaced verbose covenant formulas with statutory short-form warranty language throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, rendering the full phrase increasingly archaic in domestic instruments. Researchers encountering this language in American deeds should note the approximate date of execution: instruments predating a given state's adoption of statutory short-form covenants are more likely to deploy the full traditional formula.
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