II.   Sovereign

Waste is an 18th Century legal fiction, falsely claimed from the 13th Century whereby a cause of action brought by the claimed landlord against one (1) or more claimed tenants may be considered legal and lawful on the basis of some claimed damage or loss of value (waste) to real property.

Waste as a concept of damage or loss of value to real property may be defined as the claimed spoil or destruction to lands, houses or other corporeal hereditaments by the tenants by the tenants thereof, to the prejudice of the heir or of him in reversion or remainder.

Waste is falsely claimed as a legal concept first introduced by King Edward I (1272-1307) through the re-written Statute of Westminster after the “fires” of 1666 and then again in 1688 caused only some key originals and copies of statutes to be destroyed.

Waste is defined by three (3) types being voluntary, permissive, and ameliorative:

(i) Voluntary Waste is the intentional or negligent cause to harm the estate, depleting its resources such as destruction of houses, villages, barns, walls, livestock, forestry as well as such activities as mining. In such cases, the landlord may claim immunity from damages by existing tenants inconvenienced by such waste as the landlord claims their right to such waste; and

(ii) Permissive Waste is the failure to maintain or improve the estate, both physically and financially. In contrast to the deliberate destruction of some physical element of the estate, Permissive Waste permits the argument that the failure of a tenant to make ordinary repairs, or pay taxes, or pay interest (rent) on a mortgage constitutes waste. The argument of Permissive Waste has also been used to argue against the rights of tenants on lands where there tenants did not appear to improve the value of the land, as in the case of wholesale theft of land in Ireland, Wales and Scotland; and

(iii) Ameliorative Waste is the damage to the value of an estate through improvements that fundamentally changed its character, even if such improvements increased the value of the estate. Under Ameliorative Waste, tenants that built homes, or fences, or extensions on land where the landlord did not give explicit permission have been forced to remove such structures and return the land to its original condition under the claim of Ameliorative Waste.

The invention of the legal fiction of Waste in the 18th Century and its false claim of being introduced in the 13th Century was essential to the noble classes, merchants and lawyers to abrogate six hundred (600) years of accumulated custom of common law protecting long term tenants. Without the false concept of “waste”, the enclosure acts of 1773, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849, 1852, 1854, 1857, 1859 stealing the rights of the poor and forcing millions of British Subjects into voluntary slavery would not have been possible.