in Law, signifies any land or tenements that casually fall to a lord within the manor. It is one of the consequences of tenure in chivalry: (See Feudal System, Knight-Service, and Tenure). It is the determination of the tenure or dissolution of the mutual bond between the lord and tenant, from the extinction of the blood of the latter by either natural or civil means: if he died without heirs of his blood, or if his blood was corrupted and stained by commission of treason or felony; whereby every inheritable quality was entirely blotted out and abolished. In such cases the land escheated or fell back to the lord of the fee; that is, the tenure was determined by breach of the original condition, expressed or implied in the feudal donation. In the one case, there were no heirs subsisting of the blood of the first feudatory or purchaser, to which heirs alone the grant of the feud extended; in the other, the tenant, by perpetrating an atrocious crime, showed that he was no longer to be trusted as a vassal, having forgotten his duty as a subject; and therefore forfeited his feud, which he held under the implied condition that he should not be a traitor or a felon. The consequence of which in both cases was, that the gift being determined, resulted back to the lord who gave it.

The word escheat is sometimes used for the place or circuit within which the king or other lord is intitled to escheats; also for a writ to recover the same from the person in possession after the tenant's death.

in Scots Law, is that forfeiture which is incurred upon a person's being denounced a rebel. See Law, Part III. No clxvi. 12.