Rank Modus
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence · Benjamin Vaughan Abbott · 1879
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence
Every modus of tithes is presumably based on a composition on fairly equitable terms, by which the modus is substituted for the payment of tithe. See Modus. If then, a modus be so large that it, beyond dispute, exceeds the value of the tithes in the time of Richard I. (the date of legal memory), it is called a rank modus, and will not be accepted as a legal modus; for, as it would be destroyed by any direct evidence proving its non-existence at any time since that era, so also it is destroyed by carrying in itself this internal evidence of a much later origin.
2 Bl. Com. 30, 31 j 2 Steph. Com. 729.