Acquisitive prescription and fundamental rights

Various seventeenth-century parliamentarians resorted to the concept of acquisitive prescription when denouncing irresponsible use of the royal prerogative. Often, the concept was invoked to convey nothing more than that a custom had existed since time immemorial. But sometimes the concept was being used in its legal sense: to denote the acquisition of a right (as if someone with the authority to grant that right had done so) by virtue of some instance of long and uninterrupted enjoyment over a period of time. This paper considers the application of acquisitive prescription, a doctrine rooted in the medieval law of land obligations, in Stuart constitutional discourse.