Mesne

Between; intermediate; middle. Mesne assignment. If A grant a lease of land to B, and B assign his interest to C, and C in his turn assign his interest therein to D, in this case the assignments so made by B and C would be termed mesne assignments; that is, they would be assignments intervening between A's original grant and the vesting of D's interest in the land under the last assignment. Brown. Mesne incumbrance. An intermediate charge, burden, or liability; an incumbrance which has been created or has attached to property between two given periods. Thus, when a vendor of an estate covenants to convey land to a purchaser free from all mesne incumbrances, the meaning is free from all charges, burdens, or liabilities which might by possibility have attached to it between the period of his purchase and the time of the proposed conveyance to the intended vendee.

Mesne lord

In feudal law, one who, being lord as towards a subordinate tenant, held in his turn from a superior lord. Mesne, or mean, signifies the middle between two e.^tremes, and that either in time or dignity. In time, it is the interim betwixt one act and another, and is applied to denote profits of lands between a disseisin and recovery, &c. As to dignity, there is a lord mean, or mesne, that holds of another lord, and a mean tenant, &c. All the land in the kingdom is, by a fiction arising from the feudal origin of the English tenures, supposed to be holden mediately or immediately of the king, who is styled the lord paramount, or above all. Such tenants as held under the king immediately, when they granted out portions of their lands to inwere still tenants with respect to the king, and, thus partaking of a middle nature, were called mesne or middle lords. Jacob. Mesne process. Originally, any process between that employed for the commencement of the action and that for execution of the judgment. Thus process was styled original, mesne, or final. But the original writs formerly necessary are now disused, and actions are commenced and prosecuted by mesne process. The term includes the capias in common-law practice, the summons under codes of procedure and intermediate writs, but not execution. Mesne process is generally used in contradistinction to final process, and signifies any writ or process issued between the commencement of the action and the suing out final process or execution in such action; and includes also the writ of summons, notwithstanding this is the process by which personal actions are commenced, and therefore cannot be regarded now as mesne or intermediate process, in the literal sense of the word. Brown. Mesne profits. The rent or other pecuniary benefit which one who dispossesses the true owner receives between the disseisin and the restoration of possession, is termed mesne profits. The action of ejectment, under some systems of practice, extends to the recovery of mesne profits, or, in some jurisdictions, a distinct action, known as an action for mesne profits, will lie. Mesne profits, in the New York statute abolishing the action for mesne profits, means those which are received intermediate the original entry and the restoration of possession. The term does not include damages which accrued anterior to the ouster.

Leland v. Tousey, 6 Hill, 328, 333.

Writ of mesne, was a writ in the nature of a writ of right, brought by a tenant paravail (or under-tenant) against the mesne lord (of whom the tenant paravail immediately held the land), when the mesne lord had allowed the tenant paravail to be distrained for rent or services due from the mesne lord to the superior lord. The process on this writ was regulated by the statute of Westminster 2, 18 Edw. I. St. 1, ch.

9, passed in 1285.

But the writ itself, being a real action, was abolished in 1833 by Stat. 3 & 4 Wm. IV. ch.

27, § 36.

Moken Sf W.