EASEMENT from the French words aise, aisement, ease) is defined by the old law writers as a service or convenience which one neighbour path of another by charter or prescription without profit ; as a way through his ground, a sink, or the like. It includes rights of common, ways, water-courses, antient lights, and various other franchises, issuing out of corporeal hereditaments, and sometimes, though in accurately, the term is applied to rights of common.
At the common law these rights (which can only be created and transferred by deed) might be claimed either under an immemorial custom or by prescription ; but twenty years' uninterrupted and unex plained enjoyment of an easement formerly constituted sufficient evidence for a jury to presume that it originated in a grant by deed ; except in the city of London, where the presumption of a grant from twenty years' possession of windows was excluded by the custom which required that there should exist "some written instrument or record of an agreement" Nonuser during the same period was also considered an extinguishment of the right, as raising a presumption that it had been released.
By the statute 2nd & 3rd William IV. cap. 71, several important alterations have been made with regard to this description of property : forty years' enjoyment of any way or other easement, or any water course, and twenty years' uninterrupted " access and use of any light to and for any dwelling-house," &c., now constitute
an indefeasible title in the occupier, unless he enjoys "by some consent or agreement expressly given or made for that purpose by deed or writing." The same statute also enacts that nonuser for the like number of years (according to the description of the particular right) shall preclude a litigat ing party from establishing his claim to it.
The easements of the English corre spond to the Servitutes of the Roman and the Servitudes of the French law. (Code Civil, liv. ii. tit. 4, Des Servitudes ou Services Fenders.) The Roman Servitutes comprehended those rights which a man had in the pro perty of another, and in a corporeal thing. The subject of easements forms a large head in the Roman Law, which was so far elaborated as to form a basis on which mo dern decisions may repose. The title De Servitutibus in the eighth book of the Di gest contains the chief rules of Roman law on this subject, which have been discussed by various modern writers, as Miihlen brach, Doctrina Pandsctarunt, p. 268, &c. ; Savigny, Des Becht des Besitzes, p. 525, 5th ed.; Dirksen, Zeitschrjft fur Geschichtliche Rechtsurissenschaft, vol.
; Puchta, Curses der Institutionen, 739, &c.