Definition
Latin. In old English law, rent seck — literally "dry rent" or "barren rent." A rent reserved upon a conveyance or grant for which the grantor retained no right of distress to enforce payment. The holder of a redditus siccus could not seize the tenant's goods for non-payment; the only remedy was an action at common law. The term contrasts with rent service, which carried distress as an incident, and with rent charge, which expressly granted distress by the conveyancing instrument itself. Redditus siccus occupied the weakest position among the three classical forms of rent in English law precisely because it lacked any self-help enforcement mechanism.
Common Language
The Latin components are transparent: redditus means "return" or "payment," and siccus means "dry." In ordinary usage, "dry" in this sense is figurative — a payment that yields nothing extra, or that stands bare of any accompanying right. The legal meaning follows this figurative sense closely: the rent is "dry" because it comes unaccompanied by the right of distress that gave other forms of rent practical teeth. A researcher encountering the phrase in old conveyances or pleadings should not read it as merely descriptive of a modest payment but as a technical classification carrying specific remedial consequences.
Common Confusion
Redditus siccus is easily conflated with rent charge. Both forms of rent exist without tenure — that is, neither arises from a lord-tenant relationship carrying feudal incidents — but a rent charge expressly grants the power of distress by deed, while redditus siccus does not. The practical difference is enforcement: a rent charge holder can distrain; a redditus siccus holder cannot. The fuller Latin phrase redditus caecus et siccus ("blind and dry rent") appears in some sources and is synonymous, the word caecus ("blind") reinforcing the same idea of a rent stripped of remedial vision.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in sources predating 1700 and in treatises on English real property law from the classical common law period. Researchers will encounter it in old conveyances, Year Book material, and early commentaries rather than in modern case law. A few navigational points:
First, Rapalje & Lawrence cross-references this term to REDITUS rather than providing an independent entry, which means a researcher working through that dictionary must follow the redirect or risk missing the entry entirely.
Second, the practical significance of redditus siccus collapsed after the Statute of Grantees and Cessavit proceedings evolved, and it had become largely a historical curiosity by the time of Blackstone. Researchers studying the development of distress as a remedy, or the evolution of landlord-tenant enforcement rights, will find redditus siccus a useful fixed point — its weakness illuminates by contrast how distress came to define the commercial lease relationship.
Third, American law never meaningfully transplanted the tripartite English rent taxonomy (rent service, rent charge, rent seck). Researchers working in American property law who encounter the term in secondary sources are almost certainly reading an English common law source being applied by analogy, not a live American doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the most substantive treatment, correctly identifying redditus siccus as rent seck and citing Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Com. 42) for the core definition, along with Coke's Reports (6 Co. 58a) for the combined phrase redditus caecus et siccus. Both citations are reliable anchors. Burrill's framing as "dry or barren rent" captures the practical consequence well: the rent was unproductive of any self-help remedy.
Rapalje & Lawrence contributes nothing independently, directing readers only to the REDITUS entry. That cross-reference structure is useful to know but the substantive content rests entirely with Burrill.
Neither source addresses the historical decline of rent seck or its non-reception in American law — both treat the term as a live category of English property law, which was accurate for their period but requires contextual adjustment for modern researchers. Neither dictionary engages with the question of how redditus siccus interacted with statutory developments such as the Landlord and Tenant Act 1730 or later Distress for Rent Acts, leaving that gap for treatise-level sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Redditus siccus is a term of English common law with no meaningful independent life in American or Commonwealth jurisdictions. Its relevance to American legal research is historical and comparative only. Researchers in English legal history or in comparative real property scholarship are the primary audience.