Definition
Per que servitia (also rendered per quz servitia in some historical texts) is a Latin phrase meaning "by what services." It names a historical real action in English feudal law by which the grantee of a seigniory — that is, a person who had received lordship over land by grant — could compel the tenants of the grantor to attorn to the new lord. Attornment was the formal act by which a tenant acknowledged the new lord's authority, a necessary step in the feudal chain of tenure. Without it, the grantee's seigniory was incomplete and the tenurial relationship legally uncertain. The writ of per que servitia forced that acknowledgment through judicial process.
The action was abolished by the Real Property Limitation Act, 3 & 4 William IV, c. 27, § 35 (1833), as part of the broader Victorian-era dismantling of feudal real actions that had become procedural relics.
Common Confusion
Per que servitia is sometimes loosely grouped with other feudal writs of seisin or possession, but it is distinct in purpose. It is not a possessory action — it does not recover land. It is specifically a compulsory attornment mechanism. Researchers who encounter it in pleading records alongside writs of entry or novel disseisin should not assume they address the same problem. Those actions recover seisin; per que servitia establishes who holds the tenurial relationship.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-1833 English legal records, pleading books, and treatises on real actions. After its statutory abolition, it vanishes from active legal literature. Researchers working in early modern English conveyancing history, manorial records, or Year Book-era pleading will encounter it in contexts involving the transfer of manorial seigniories and the procedural necessity of securing tenant loyalty to new lords.
The critical research trap is treating "seigniory" and "seisin of land" as interchangeable. Per que servitia was triggered by the transfer of a seigniory — a lord's rights over tenants — not by the conveyance of the land itself. A researcher cataloging feudal writs who misreads this distinction will misclassify the action and misread the underlying dispute.
Because the writ depends entirely on the doctrine of attornment, any corpus research into per que servitia must move immediately to sources on attornment and the feudal incidents of tenure. The action has no counterpart in American law, which never adopted the compulsory attornment framework of English feudal tenure in any systematic way. American real property sources will not contain this term in active use.
The 1833 abolition statute is the hard terminus for the action. Any source after that date using the term is either historical commentary or quotation, not live law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) gives a compact and accurate entry: a real action allowing the seigniory grantee to compel tenant attornment, abolished by 3 & 4 William IV, c. 27, § 35. The entry is reliable as far as it goes but does not explain the feudal mechanics that give the action its logic — namely, that under English tenure theory, a tenant owed services to a specific lord, and a change of lordship without attornment left the service obligations in legal limbo.
Older English authorities, including Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium and the commentary tradition running through Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (Book III), provide richer treatment of real actions as a class, though per que servitia is a minor writ in that literature. Black's entry appears to draw on this tradition without citing it. No significant divergence among historical sources on the core description of the writ has been identified; it is simply an obscure action that most dictionaries do not cover at all.
Jurisdictional Note
Per que servitia is exclusively English in origin and application. It presupposes the feudal tenure system and the doctrine of compulsory attornment, neither of which took root in American colonial or early republican property law. No American jurisdiction recognized or adopted this action.