notion of headship was extended by analogy so as to cover the relation of a master to freemen filling a servile place for the time being, and that the relations thus embraced were generalized under the misleading fiction of identity.
The familia, Bracton says, embraces "those who are regarded in the light of serfs, such as, &c. So, too, as well freemen as serfs, and those over whom one has the power of command."[1]
In West's Symboleography,[2] a work which was published towards the beginning of the reign of James I., and which, though mainly a form book, gives several glimpses of far-reaching insight, we read as follows:—
"The person is he which either agreeth or offendeth, and beside him none other.
"And both may be bound either mediately, or immediately.
"Immediately, if he which is bound doe agree.
"Mediately, when if he, which by nature differeth from him, but not by law, whereby as by some bond he is fained to be all one person, doth contract, or offend, of which sort in some cases be those which be in our power, as a wife, a bondman, servant, a factor, an Attourney, or Procurator, exceeding their authority."
Here we see that the patria potestas is the substantive ground, that it is extended to cover free agents, who are not even domestic servants, and that it finds its formal expression in the fiction of identity.
So, at the beginning of the next reign, it was said that an action for fire, due to the negligence of a wife, or servant, lay "vers patrem familias."[3] The extension of the liability, as shown by West, is sometimes expressed in later books by saying that it is not confined to cases where the party stands in the relation of paterfamilias to the wrong-doer;[4] but this only means that the rule extends to other servants besides domestic servants, and admits the analogy or starting-point.[5]
Every one is familiar with the fiction as applied to married
- ↑ "Et etiam familiae appellatio eos complectitur qui loco servorum habentur, sicut sunt mercenarii et conductitii. Item tarn liberi quam servi, et quibus poterit imperari." Bract., fol. 171 b.
- ↑ Lib I., Sect. 3, ad fin. "Of the Fact of Man."
- ↑ Shelley & Barr's Case, 1 Roll. Abr. 2, pl. 7 (M. 1 Car. I.).
- ↑ Bac. Abr., Master and Servant, K; Smith's Master & Servant, 3d ed., 260.
- ↑ Laugher v. Pointer, 5 B. & C. 547, 554 (1826). Cf. Bush v. Steinman, 1 Bos. & P. 404 (1799).
