Livery of seisin

Livery of seisin (/ˈsiːzɪn/) is an archaic legal conveyancing ceremony, formerly practised in feudal England and in other countries following English common law, used to convey holdings in property.

The oldest forms of common law provided that a valid conveyance of a feudal tenure in land required physical transfer by the transferor to the transferee in the presence of witnesses of a piece of the ground itself, in the literal sense of a hand-to-hand passing of an amount of soil, a twig, key to a building on that land, or other token.

The turf and twig ceremony dates from the feudal era but was used regularly in early colonial America allowing the English and Scottish (after 1707 termed the British), by virtue of their monarch's claims, to take sovereign possession over unclaimed lands.

Bernulf Hodge in A History of Malmesbury describes the process in at least Wiltshire, discontinued in the late 17th century, as follows:[1] The lucky new Commoner goes to his "given" acre and cuts a turf from the selected site and drops two shillings in the hole made.

The High Steward then takes the money out of the hole and the new landowner replaces the turf.The last legal ceremony of seisin (sasine) in Scotland was performed in 2002 as Glenmorangie handed over the land of St Mary’s Chapel in Easter Ross to the Cadboll Trust.