MEMORY. Understanding; a capacity to make contracts, a will, or to commit a
crime, so far as intention is necessary.
2. Memory is sometimes employed to express the capacity of the
understanding, and sometimes its power; when we speak of a retentive memory,
we use it in the former sense; when of a ready memory, in the latter. Shelf.
on Lun. Intr. 29, 30.
3. Memory, in another sense, is the reputation, good or bad, which a
man leaves at his death. This memory, when good, is highly prized by the
relations of the deceased, and it is therefore libelous to throw a shade
over the memory of the dead, when the writing has a tendency to create a
breach of the peace, by inciting the friends and relations of the deceased
to avenge the insult offered to the family. 4 T. R. 126; 5 Co. R. 125; Hawk.
b. 1, c. 73, s. 1.
MEMORY, TIME OF. According to the English common law, which has been altered
by 2 & 3 Wm. IV., c. 71, the time of memory commenced from the reign of
Richard the First, A. D. 1189. 2 Bl. Com. 31.
2. But proof of a regular usage for twenty years, not explained or
contradicted, is evidence upon which many public and private rights are
held, and sufficient for a jury in finding the existence of an immemorial
custom or prescription. 2 Saund. 175, a, d; Peake's Ev. 336; 2 Price's R.
450; 4 Price's R. 198.