I found this article rather... unsatisfactory. So the statute introduced the concept of "time immemorial". Except it sort of didn't, it just introduced a limit that later came to be referred to as "time immemorial". It also doesn't call it anything like "the barrier between that which we know and that which we don’t.", but indeed it does mark a point after which oral history is no longer enough. On page 100 in the linked translation:
> That in conveighing a Descent in a Writ of Right, none shall presume to declare of the Seisin of his Ancestor further, or beyond the Time of King Richard, Uncle to King Hentry, Father to the King that now is;
It then says the term "time immemorial" was actually introduced by the Prescription Act 1832 (and links to a different page than it is talking about) but that actually says:
> Whereas the expression “time immemorial, or time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” is now by the Law of England in many cases considered to include and denote the whole period of time from the Reign of King Richard the First, whereby the title to matters that have been long enjoyed is sometimes defeated by shewing the commencement of such enjoyment, which is in many cases productive of inconvenience and injustice;
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding this since it was written almost 200 years ago, but this reads like it is describing an existing term in use in the Law of England. A term supposedly introduced at some point between 1275 and 1831 to describe the limit introduced by the Statute of Westminster 1275.
The included history is interesting, but how this date turned into the concept of "time immemorial" remains unknown.
It wasn't terribly clear how rights became extinguished by time for Thomas Littleton, who published his "Tenures" in 1481 or 1482. In chapter 38 of the first Statute of Westminster (3 Edw. I, c. 38) of 1275, they put time limits on various writs.
"It is Provided, That in conveying a Descent in a Writ of Right, none shall [presume] to declare of the Seisin of his ancestor further, or beyond the time of King Richard, Uncle to King Henry [III], Father of the King that now is"
Which is to say, 1189, 86 years earlier. Other writs were limited to the voyage of King Henry III in Gascony (1230?), and others still to his coronation in 1216.
Now according to [1], other limitations were put under Henry VIII, until the act of 1832, where they made it clear that its limitations were the ones to use, and not the old standard of the reign of Richard I, from the Statute of Westminster.
I was struggling with it myself, but I think your reading of it is correct. The paragraph about the 1832 Prescription Act needs some work on its grammar.
> That in conveighing a Descent in a Writ of Right, none shall presume to declare of the Seisin of his Ancestor further, or beyond the Time of King Richard, Uncle to King Hentry, Father to the King that now is;
It then says the term "time immemorial" was actually introduced by the Prescription Act 1832 (and links to a different page than it is talking about) but that actually says:
> Whereas the expression “time immemorial, or time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” is now by the Law of England in many cases considered to include and denote the whole period of time from the Reign of King Richard the First, whereby the title to matters that have been long enjoyed is sometimes defeated by shewing the commencement of such enjoyment, which is in many cases productive of inconvenience and injustice;
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding this since it was written almost 200 years ago, but this reads like it is describing an existing term in use in the Law of England. A term supposedly introduced at some point between 1275 and 1831 to describe the limit introduced by the Statute of Westminster 1275.
The included history is interesting, but how this date turned into the concept of "time immemorial" remains unknown.