Definition
A tenant by the manner is a person who holds a lesser estate in land than a fee simple, where the fee simple (or a greater estate) remains vested in the reversioner. The term describes a holder whose particular estate — such as a life estate, estate for years, or fee tail — is less than full ownership, and who therefore occupies the land subject to a reversion that will return to another.
The defining feature is relational: this tenant holds something less than the whole, and the "manner" of his tenancy must be specifically described in pleadings to distinguish him from the veray tenant (the true or full tenant), who is called simply "tenant" without qualification.
The term is primarily a pleading and avowry concept from common law practice rather than a substantive estate classification in its own right.
Common Confusion
TENANT BY THE MANNER vs. VERAY TENANT: These terms are paired opposites in the same procedural context. The veray tenant is the full tenant — typically the fee simple holder — who can be named in pleadings without elaboration. The tenant by the manner, by contrast, must have his lesser interest specifically set out. In modern property law, this distinction has lost procedural significance, but in historical sources (particularly those addressing distraint and avowry practice), conflating the two leads to misreading the nature of the tenure being described.
TENANT BY THE MANNER vs. TENANT IN COMMON / JOINT TENANT: These should not be confused. Tenancy in common and joint tenancy describe co-ownership arrangements. Tenant by the manner describes the quality of an estate relative to the reversion, not a co-ownership structure.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical sources predating modern property law consolidation. Researchers encountering it in older reports, treatises, or pleading forms should recognize several navigational points:
The term is a creature of avowry practice. Avowry was the landlord's or distrainor's justification for distraint of goods — a pleading in replevin actions. When the distrainor's right to distrain depended on tenure, the nature of that tenure had to be precisely stated. A tenant by the manner required explicit pleading of what estate he held; a veray tenant did not. Missing this context makes the term appear more substantive than it is.
The term does not map cleanly onto modern property categories. In contemporary law, the relevant concepts would be life tenant, leaseholder, or holder of a defeasible fee — each with distinct doctrinal treatment. When translating a historical source that uses "tenant by the manner," the researcher should identify which lesser estate is actually at issue before applying modern doctrine.
Cross-period research caution: Sources from the 16th through 18th centuries use this term with some regularity in pleading manuals and nisi prius texts. By the 19th century it appears mainly in dictionaries and treatises as a historical entry rather than active practice vocabulary. The shift from active to archival usage is not always marked in older secondary sources, which can create a false impression that the concept remained in practical use longer than it did.
No significant jurisdictional variation is documented because the term did not survive into American statutory or codified property law as an operative concept. It entered American legal dictionaries by inheritance from English practice rather than by adoption into domestic procedure.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the primary surviving definition, drawn from Hammond's Nisi Prius (Ham. N. P. 393): "One who has a less estate than a fee in land which remains in the reversioner." Black's correctly identifies the pleading origin — that the tenant is "so called because in avowries and other pleadings it is specially shown in what manner he is tenant of the land, in contradistinction to the veray tenant."
This entry is functional but thin. Black's does not elaborate on which lesser estates qualify, does not trace the term's procedural history in replevin and distress actions, and does not note that the term was already receding from active use by the time American legal dictionaries began incorporating English common law vocabulary.
No other major historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus provides a competing or supplementary definition. The term's narrow procedural origin explains why it did not generate the doctrinal commentary that attached to broader property concepts. Researchers should treat Black's entry as a reliable summary of the term's core meaning while consulting Hammond's Nisi Prius directly for the procedural context in which it operated.