Definition
A Scottish legal procedure in which the sheriff ascertains and formally assigns the proportionate share of a deceased husband's lands to which his widow is entitled under her right of terce — the Scottish law equivalent of dower. The kenning was the official act of measurement and allocation: the sheriff would examine the husband's landholdings and determine what fraction (typically one-third of the heritable estate held in fee simple) properly belonged to the widow as her terce. The term encompasses both the process of inquiry and the resulting determination.
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Common Confusion
TERCE and DOWER are closely related but not identical. Dower is the common law English institution; terce is the Scottish equivalent. Historical dictionaries treat them as functional analogs — Black's own definition equates them parenthetically — but they arose from separate legal traditions and were governed by distinct Scottish rules. Researchers should not assume that English dower cases or statutes illuminate the precise mechanics of terce without independent verification in Scottish sources. The kenning itself has no direct English common law parallel: English dower was assigned by the husband's heir or by writ, not by a sheriff acting in this specific administrative capacity.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is a narrow procedural term of Scottish property law with no surviving operational significance — terce as a widow's entitlement to heritable property was substantially altered and ultimately abolished under Scottish succession law reforms in the twentieth century, most consequentially by the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964, which replaced terce and other prior rights with a new statutory framework of prior rights and legal rights. Any source predating 1964 that discusses terce or kenning to a terce is describing a regime that no longer operates.
For corpus researchers, the principal trap is anachronism: a historical treatise or case discussing kenning to a terce describes a live legal procedure at the time of writing, but the same passage may appear in a later reprint or digest without any indication that the underlying law has been superseded. Always verify the date of the primary source and check whether the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964 had yet taken effect.
The term also illustrates a broader navigational challenge in Scottish legal history: Scots law borrowed heavily from both Roman law and feudal tradition, producing terminology that looks unfamiliar to common law researchers and familiar terminology that carries distinct Scottish meaning. Bell's Dictionary — the source cited by all three historical dictionaries here — is the standard reference for classical Scots law terminology and remains the best starting point for contextualizing kenning and terce within the broader Scottish heritable property framework.
Connections to watch in the corpus: entries for TERCE, DOWER, LIFERENT, COURTESY (the husband's analogous life interest in a wife's lands), and HERITABLE PROPERTY will cluster with kenning to a terce in historical Scottish sources.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries — Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill's — are in complete agreement, reproducing the same one-sentence definition with only minor punctuation variation. All three trace the definition to Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland, which is the appropriate authority. The uniformity across these dictionaries reflects the term's narrow, technical, and essentially settled character: it had one meaning, one jurisdiction, and one source.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide is any procedural detail — how the sheriff conducted the kenning, what evidence was required, or how disputes over the proportion were resolved. Nor do they note the eventual legislative fate of terce. Researchers requiring more than a bare identification of the term must go directly to Bell or to treatises on Scottish heritable succession.
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Jurisdictional Note
Exclusively Scottish. The term has no application in English, Welsh, Irish, or American law. In American legal research, kenning to a terce appears only in comparative or historical discussions of dower's international analogs.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Terce
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Dower
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Scottish Heritable Property
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