SEQUELS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

SEQUELSAuthored

The Law Mind • 799 words

Definition

A historical legal term with two distinct archaic meanings, neither of which relates to the modern sense of the word:

1. (Feudal English law) The goods and chattels of villeins, which were held to be at the absolute disposal of the lord. Under the feudal tenure system, serfs and villeins possessed no independent property rights; their personal property was legally subsumed within the lord's estate and subject to his claim.

2. (Scottish law) Small allowances of meal or manufactured victual — that is, processed grain products — given to the servants or workers at a mill where corn was ground by tenure. These allowances were a customary incident of service at thirlage mills, reflecting the practice of compensating mill workers in kind rather than in currency.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "sequel" — subsequent works, installments, or events that follow and continue an earlier one.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "That which follows; a succeeding part; continuation." The term carried a general sense of succession or consequence in ordinary speech.

Editorial note: The gap here is total. The legal term SEQUELS shares no conceptual relationship with the common English word. The legal meanings derive from an entirely separate Latin root tradition and feudal context. A researcher encountering SEQUELS in a historical legal document should not assume any connection to succession or continuation in the narrative sense. Context — feudal English tenure versus Scottish mill practice — will determine which legal meaning applies.

Common Confusion

SEQUELS (Scottish mill allowances) should not be confused with THIRLAGE, though the two concepts are closely linked. Thirlage was the broader system of obligation by which tenants were compelled to have their grain ground at the lord's designated mill; sequels were a specific customary benefit — the in-kind allowances — paid to mill servants within that system. Rapalje & Lawrence explicitly cross-references THIRLAGE for fuller treatment. The two terms describe different sides of the same feudal mill relationship: thirlage names the obligation, sequels names the compensation incident to it.

Why It Matters in Research

SEQUELS is an obsolete term unlikely to appear in any modern legal context. Researchers will encounter it only in historical sources dealing with feudal land tenure, Scottish customary law, or agrarian legal history.

The term's dual meaning is a genuine research trap: the feudal English sense (villein chattels) and the Scottish mill sense (grain allowances) are entirely unrelated in origin and application, yet both appear under the same headword in Black's. The document's geographic and subject-matter context is the only reliable guide to which meaning applies. English feudal records and Scottish mill tenure records are distinct corpora, and conflating them would produce significant interpretive error.

Researchers working in Scottish legal history should follow Rapalje & Lawrence's cross-reference to THIRLAGE, which provides the broader institutional framework within which sequels operated. The mill allowance meaning is largely unintelligible without understanding thirlage as the governing tenure relationship.

The villein chattels meaning connects to the broader cluster of feudal property concepts — villeinage, copyhold, serfdom — and should be read alongside those terms when encountered in English agrarian legal sources.

Neither meaning has survived into modern law. SEQUELS does not appear in contemporary statutes, restatements, or case law in either sense.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence are in agreement on both meanings, and all three sources treat the Scottish mill allowance definition as primary — it receives the fuller treatment in each. The villein chattels definition appears as a secondary note in Black's, with a citation to "Par. Antiq. 216," a reference to Robert Brady's or a similar antiquarian work on parliamentary antiquities; researchers should treat this citation with appropriate caution and verify the source independently.

Rapalje & Lawrence is the most economical of the three, providing only the Scottish definition and directing readers immediately to THIRLAGE. This editorial choice suggests the compilers regarded the Scottish mill meaning as the more practically relevant usage. Black's sequential placement of SEQUELS immediately before the entry for SEQUESTER is a formatting artifact and carries no substantive connection.

None of the historical dictionaries provides case authority or statutory grounding for either definition. Both meanings appear to rest on customary practice and antiquarian description rather than formal legal doctrine.

Jurisdictional Note

The villein chattels meaning is specific to English feudal law and has no application in Scottish or American legal traditions. The mill allowance meaning is specific to Scotland and reflects Scottish customary tenure. American legal sources will not use SEQUELS in either sense; researchers in U.S. legal history encountering this term have almost certainly encountered a text of British origin.

SEQUELSmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

Small allowances of meal, or manufactured victual, made to the serv- ants at a mill where corn was ground, by tenure, in Scotland. Wharton. SEQUESTER, . In the civil law. To renounce or disclaim, etc. As when a wid- ow came into court and disclaimed having anything to do with her deceased husband's estate, she was said to sequester. The word more commonly signifies the act of taking in execution under a writ of sequestration. Brown. To deposit a thing which is the subject of a controversy in the hands of a third person, to hold for the contending parties. To take a thing which is the subject of a controversy out of the possession of the con- tending parties, and deposit it in the hands of a third person. Calvin. In equity practice. To take possession of the property of a defendant, and hold it in the custody of the court, until he purges him- self of a contempt. In English ecclesiastical practice. To gather and take care of the fruits and profits of a vacant benefice, for the benefit of the next incumbent. . In international law. To confiscate; to appropriate private property to public use; to seize the property of the private citizens of a hostile power, as when a belligerent na- tion sequesters debts due from its own sub- jects to the enemy. See 1 Kent, Comm. 62. SEQUESTER, n. Lat. In the civil law. A person with whom two or more con- tending parties deposited the subject-matter of the controversy.