Definition
A precautionary stipulation inserted into a deed for the purpose of creating a valid tenant to the praecipe in a common recovery. The clause was a technical conveyancing device used in the English real property system to ensure that the procedural machinery of common recovery operated without defect. By including this stipulation, the drafter guarded against the possibility that a flaw in the tenant's title or in the deed itself would collapse the entire recovery.
The name derives from the conventional sum — one hundred thousand pounds — recited in the clause as a penalty or bond condition, a figure chosen not for any realistic financial significance but as a sufficiently large nominal amount to lend solemnity and enforceability to the undertaking.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost entirely to the pre-1833 English conveyancing world and will surface almost exclusively in historical deeds, conveyancing manuals, and treatises dealing with common recoveries. Researchers working with English land records, title chains, or equity proceedings from roughly the seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries may encounter the clause in deed recitals without any further explanation in the document itself.
The abolition of common recoveries by the Fines and Recoveries Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 74) rendered this clause obsolete almost overnight. Any legal dictionary or conveyancing treatise published after 1833 treats it as a historical artifact. American researchers should note that common recoveries, while known in colonial practice, were not uniformly adopted across the states, and the clause is far less likely to appear in American instruments than in English ones. Where it does appear in American records, it signals a deed drafted by a practitioner trained in English conveyancing forms.
The practical research trap is misreading the clause as a genuine financial obligation or penalty provision when it is nothing more than a formal conveyancing formula. The enormous sum is conventional, not literal.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd ed., Supplemental) defines the clause concisely as "a precautionary stipulation inserted in a deed making a good tenant to the praecipe in a common recovery," citing Preston on Conveyancing (1 Prest. Conv. 110). Preston's work remains the standard primary authority for understanding the mechanics of this device. Black's entry is spare, reflecting the term's status as a technical survival from a superseded system rather than a living concept requiring elaboration.
Historical dictionaries generally treat this clause only in the context of entries on common recovery and tenant to the praecipe. It does not receive independent treatment in most sources because it was understood as a subordinate tool within a larger procedural framework, not a freestanding legal concept. Sources that predate the Fines and Recoveries Act 1833 are more likely to discuss it as an active practice; post-1833 sources uniformly treat it as obsolete.
No meaningful divergence exists among historical dictionaries on the substance of the clause. The sole variation is in depth of treatment: some conveyancing manuals explain the mechanics in detail, while general legal dictionaries, including Black's, reduce it to a one-sentence identification.
Jurisdictional Note
The clause is a creature of English real property law and its application in jurisdictions outside England is limited. American courts and practitioners occasionally referenced common recovery forms in early republic-era conveyancing, but the clause's relevance in the United States is confined to historical document interpretation rather than any living legal doctrine.