_Solemnisation of Matrimony_ (Vol. ii., p. 464.).--A. A. will find, from
Blackstone's _Commentaries_, vol. ii. p. 135., that in feudal times a
husband had the power of protecting his lands from the wife's claim to
dower, by endowing her, _ad ostium Ecclesiæ_, with specific estates to the
exclusion of others; or, if he had no lands at the time of the marriage, by
an endowment in goods, chattels, or money. When special endowments were
thus made, the husband, after affiance made and troth plighted, used to
declare with what specific lands he meant to endow his wife ("_quod dotat
eam de tali manerio_," &c.); and therefore, in the old York ritual (_Seld.
Ux. Hebr._ l. ii. c. 27.) there is at this part of the matrimonial service
the following rubric--"_Sacerdos interroget dotem mulieris; et si terra ei
in dotem detur, tunc dicatur psalmus iste_", &c. When the wife was endowed
_generally_, the husband seems to have said "with all my lands and
tenements I thee endow," and then they all became liable to her dower. When
he endowed her with personalty only, he used to say, "with all my worldly
goods (or, as the Salisbury ritual has it, "with all my worldly chattels")
I thee endow," which entitled the wife to her thirds, or _pars
rationabilis_, of his personal estate, which is provided for by Magna
Charta, cap. 26. The meaning, therefore, of the words noticed in A. A.'s
Query, if they can be said to have any meaning in the present state of the
law, is simply that the wife's dower is to be general, and not specific,
or, in other words, that she is to have her _pars rationabilis_ in _all_
her husband's goods.