Definition
"Whatsoever else he has in the tene" is an archaic phrase drawn from early English conveyancing and feudal land tenure practice. It appears as a catch-all clause in deeds, grants, and agreements to capture any residual interests, appurtenances, or property held within a tenement or tene — the latter being an older contracted form of "tenement," meaning a holding of land or a unit of property subject to tenure. The phrase functions as a sweeping dragnet in a grant or agreement, ensuring that nothing belonging to the grantor within the tenement is inadvertently excluded from the conveyance or arrangement.
In essence, it signals: whatever the holder possesses within the subject tenement beyond the specifically enumerated items — buildings, rights, profits, easements, customs — is included by this phrase.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Whatsoever" is an emphatic form of "whatever," meaning "of any kind; regardless of what." "Tene" has no independent modern common meaning and would not be recognized by a general reader.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Whatsoever" is defined as an emphatic or universal form of "whatever" — "of what kind soever; of any kind or nature." "Tenement" in Webster's 1913 encompasses both its popular sense (a dwelling, especially a multi-unit urban building) and a broader property sense (any permanent holding of property).
The gap between common and legal meaning here is substantial and twofold. First, "tene" as a standalone contraction for "tenement" is strictly a legal and conveyancing term of art; no ordinary reader would recognize it. Second, the phrase as a whole is not merely descriptive language but a formal term of conveyancing art with operative legal effect — it expands the scope of a grant or agreement to sweep in residual, unspecified interests. The casual reader seeing "whatsoever else" would understand only a vague intensifier; the conveyancer understood it as a defined function within the document's operative clauses.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase will appear almost exclusively in older English primary sources: medieval and early modern deeds, leases, court rolls, and plea records, as well as in English equity and common law reports of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Researchers working in Law Mind's historical corpus should note several traps:
First, the contraction "tene" for "tenement" is unstandardized across manuscripts and early printed sources. Variant spellings — "tene," "ten'," "tenement," or even "tenem't" in abbreviated Latin-influenced court hand — may require paleographic attention when reading original documents.
Second, the phrase's operative significance depends entirely on context. In a deed of grant, it is an all-inclusive appurtenance clause. In an agreement between parties (the context flagged by Rapalje & Lawrence, citing 2 Taunt. 198), it may define the scope of one party's interest or obligation. Researchers should not assume the phrase carries identical weight across document types.
Third, by the nineteenth century, conveyancing reform and the emergence of standard printed forms largely rendered this kind of archaic sweep clause obsolete in practice. Its appearance in a nineteenth-century source is more likely to be a matter of interpretation of an older document than a contemporary drafting choice. Researchers tracing the history of appurtenance clauses, general words in conveyances, or the scope of property grants will find this phrase a useful marker of older drafting conventions.
The connection to 2 Taunt. 198 (Taunton's Reports, Court of Common Pleas, early nineteenth century England) places this phrase in the context of contested interpretation of agreement language — a reminder that courts were still being asked to construe these archaic formulations well into the modern period.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence is the sole historical dictionary source providing a formal entry for this phrase. Their treatment is notably sparse — the entry does little more than signal that the phrase appears in the context of an agreement and cite 2 Taunt. 198. This brevity is informative: even a comprehensive nineteenth-century legal dictionary found little to say beyond locating the phrase in practice and pointing to a single case. It is not defined as a term of art with fixed elements, suggesting it functioned as contextually understood usage rather than a formally codified legal formula.
No other major historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind shelf — including Jacob, Bouvier, or Black's early editions — appear to carry a dedicated entry for this phrase, which itself reflects how narrowly it circulated as a recognized term of art versus a piece of conveyancing boilerplate.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase is a product of English land law and conveyancing practice. It has no recognized counterpart in American legal usage and would not appear in domestic U.S. instruments. Researchers working in American historical real property records should treat any appearance of this phrase as evidence of direct English influence or as language carried over from pre-independence conveyancing forms.