messuage

plural messuages

1. lawOriginally, a plot of land as the site for a dwelling house and its appurtenant interests; now, a dwelling house or residential building together with its outbuildings and assigned land.

   Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir / To a chancery suit, and messuages, and lands, / Which, with a long minority and care, / Promised to turn out well in proper hands: […]

   1819 July 15, [Lord Byron], Don Juan, London: […] Thomas Davison, […], →OCLC, canto I, stanza XXXVII, page 21

   4 more examples

   And be it further ordained and enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That the Right and Title of the said Ecclesiastics of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice of Montreal, in and to all and singular the said Fiefs and Seigniories of the Island of Montreal, of the Lake of the Two Mountains, and of Saint Sulpice, and their several Dependencies, and in and to all Seigniorial and Feudal Rights, Privileges, Dues, and Duties arising out of and from the same, and in and to all and every the Domains, Lands, Reservations, Buildings, Messuages, Tenements, and Hereditaments within the said several Fiefs and Seigniories now held and possessed by them as Proprietors thereof, […] shall be and they are hereby confirmed and declared good, valid, and effectual in the Law; […]

   1840 June 8, C[harles] Poulett Thomson, “An Ordinance to Incorporate the Ecclesiastics of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice of Montreal; […] [No. 164 of 1840]”, in Copy of Ordinances Passed by the Governor and Special Council of Lower Canada, in the Third and Fourth Years of the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (Accounts and Papers, Parliament of the United Kingdom, House of Commons; 1841, session 1), volume XV, published 3 February 1841, →OCLC, pages 151–152

   She went—and in one month / They wedded her to sixty thousand pounds, / To lands in Kent and messuages in York, / And slight Sir Robert with his watery smile / And educated whisker.

   1842, Alfred Tennyson, “[English Idyls and Other Poems. (Published 1842.)] Edwin Morris; or, The Lake”, in Poems, 8th edition, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1853, →OCLC, page 235

   Page 174, line 25. Perhaps the Richard Longebothome here mentioned was the same man as the Richard who herioted the property in 1509. Apr. 23, I Hen. VIII (1509). Ric. Longebothome paid xxiijˢ iiijᵈ [23s 4d] fine for license of herioting one messuage called Longebothome, one cottage, and 40 acres of land and meadow in Soureby after the death of Ric. Longebothome and Agnes, his wife, grandfather […]

   1904, Halifax Wills: Being Abstracts and Translations of the Wills Registered at York from the Parish of Halifax, volume 2

   Matthias turned his lonely house into a mart where furniture, plate and titledeeds to fields and messuages could be brought, evaluated, and transferred to the hands of the primal twelve as administrators.

   1985 September 1, Anthony Burgess, chapter 1, in The Kingdom of the Wicked, London: Allison & Busby, published 2009, →ISBN, page 74

   Synonyms: mease