Confessor or ancient Saxon system; and accordingly, in the first year of his reign he granted a charter, whereby he gave up the greater grievances, but still reserved the fiction of feudal tenure for the same military purposes which induced his father to introduce it. But this charter was gradually broken through, and the former grievances were revived and aggravated by himself and succeeding princes, till in the reign of King John they became so intolerable, that they occasioned his barons, or principal feudatories, to rise up in arms against him, which at length produced the famous Magna Charta, at Runnymede, which, with some alterations, was confirmed by his son Henry III. Further concessions were afterwards made, and ultimately a restoration was brought about of the ancient constitution, of which our ancestors had been defrauded by the art and finesse of the Norman lawyers, rather than deprived by the force of the Norman arms.*

*For a succinct narrative of the origin of Feuds, see Hallam's "History of the Middle Ages."

ANCIENT AND MODERN ENGLISH TENURES.

In this chapter we shall take a short view, first, of the Ancient Tenures as they stood in force till the middle of the last century, by which we shall perceive that all the peculiarities and hardships that attended these ancient tenures were the fruits of, and deduced from, the feudal policy; and secondly, of the Modern English Tenures which succeeded them.

Explain, first, the Ancient English Tenures, and state how and by whom they were abolished.

Almost all the real property of the kingdom is, by the policy of our laws, supposed to be granted by, dependent upon, and holden of some superior lord, in consideration of certain services to be rendered to the lord by the tenant or possessor of the property. The thing holden is therefore styled a tenement, the possessors thereof tenants, and the manner of their possession a tenure. The king was considered the lord paramount, and such tenants as held under him were called his tenants in capite, or in chief; and when those tenants granted out portions of their land to inferior persons, they became also lords with respect to those inferior persons, and being still tenants of the king, were called mesne, or middle lords.

Amongst our ancestors there were four principal species of lay tenures,-tenant by knight-service, tenant by grand serjeanty, tenant by cornage, and tenant by escuage, the grand criteria of which were the natures of the several services or renders that were due to the lords from their tenants. The services in respect of their QUALITY were either free or base services, and their QUANTITY and the time of EXACTING them were either certain or uncertain.

H

Free services were such as were not unbecoming the character of a soldier or a freeman to perform, as to serve under his lord in the wars, to pay a sum of money, and the like. Base services were such as were fit only for peasants, or persons of a servile rank; as to plough the lord's land, to make his hedges, to carry out his dung, or other mean employments. The certain services, whether free or base, were such as to pay a stated annual rent, or to plough such a field for three days. The uncertain depended upon unknown contingencies; as to do military service in person, or pay an assessment in lieu of it, when called upon; or to wind a horn whenever the Scots invaded the realm, which were free services; or, to do whatever the lord should command, which was a base or villein service.

The tenure by knight-service was the most universal, and it drew after it these seven exactions,-AIDS, RELIEF, PRIMER SEISIN, WARDSHIP, MARRIAGE, FINES FOR ALIENATION, and

ESCHEAT.

Aids were originally mere benevolences granted by the tenant to his lord in times of difficulty and distress, but afterwards made compulsory, to ransom the lord's person if taken prisoner; to make the lord's eldest son a knight; or to marry the lord's eldest daughter by giving her a suitable portion

-Reliefs were fines payable to the lord on taking up the estate at the death of the last tenant- -Primer seisin, the right of the king on the death of a tenant in capite ut de coronâ, and not to those who held of inferior or mesne lords, or even in capite when ut de honore; a right which the king had, when any of his tenants in capite died seised of a knight's fee, to receive of the heir one whole year's profits of the lands. This gave a handle to the Popes, who claimed to be feudal lords of the Church, to claim in like manner from every clergyman in England the first year's profits of his benefice by way of primitiæ, or first-fruits- -Wardship, the right of the lord to have the custody or wardship of the heir till the age of twenty-one in males and sixteen in females-Livery of ousterlemain, that is, the delivery of lands out of the guardian's hands, when a fine of half a year's profits was inflicted- -Marriage, the right of the lord to dispose of his infant wards in marriage, which if the infants refused they forfeited the value of the marriage, the

amount of which was assessed by a jury; and if the infants married without the guardian's consent, they forfeited double the value; duplicem valorem maritagii Fines, sums due to the lord on alienation by the tenant-Escheats, the reversion of the fee to the lord on the extinction or corruption of the blood of the tenant.

The families of our nobility and gentry groaned under the burthens of these military tenures, which were introduced and laid upon them by the subtlety and finesse of the Norman lawyers. Many heirs on the death of their ancestors, if of full age, were plundered of the first emoluments arising from their inheritances by way of relief and primer seisin; and if under age, of the whole of their inheritances during infancy. These with other exactions forced many to sell their patronages, but they were not allowed even that privilege without paying an exorbitant sum for a licence of alienation.

Remonstrances were made, and palliatives were from time to time applied by successive Acts of Parliament, which assuaged some temporary grievances, till at length the military tenures, with all their heavy appendages, were destroyed at one blow by stat. 12 Car. II., c. 24, which enacts "that the court of wards and liveries, and all wardships, liveries, primer seisins, and ousterlemains, values, and forfeitures of marriage, by reason of any tenure of the king or others, be totally taken away; and that all fines for alienations, tenures by homage, knight-service and escuage, and also aids for marrying the daughter or knighting the son, and all tenures of the king in capite, be likewise abolished; and that all sorts of tenures be turned into free and common socage, save only tenures in frankalmoign, copyhold, and grand serjeantry,”—a statute which was a greater acquisition than even Magna Carta itself, which only pruned the luxuries that had grown out of the military tenures, but the statute of King Charles extirpated the whole, and demolished both root and branches.

Explain the Modern English Tenures, and the tenure of "pure villenage," from which sprang our present "Copyhold" Tenures.

The oppressive or military part of the feudal constitu

tion being abolished, the tenures of socage and frankalmoign, the honorary services of grand serjeanty, and the tenures by court roll were reserved, and all others were reduced to one general species of tenure then subsisting, called free and common socage, which signified a free or privileged tenure, but better known by its modern name or equivalent, freehold, by which the bulk of real property is holden at the present day.

Socage tenures (tenures by any certain determinate service) seem to have been relics of Saxon liberty, retained by such persons as had neither forfeited them to the king, nor been obliged to exchange their tenure for the more honourable, as it was called, but more burthensome tenure of knight-service. This is peculiarly remarkable in the tenure which prevails in Kent, called gavelkind, which is acknowledged to be a species of socage tenure, the preservation of which from the innovations of the Norman conqueror is a fact universally known; and those who thus preserved their liberties were said to hold in free and common socage.

The grand distinguishing mark of this species of tenure is having its renders or services ascertained; and as such it includes all other methods of holding free lands by certain and invariable rents and duties; and in particular, petit serjeanty, tenure in burgage, and gavelkind.

Petit serjeanty, as defined by Littleton, "consists in holding lands of the king by the service of rendering to him annually some small implement of war, as a bow, a sword, a lance, an arrow, or the like." This, he adds, "is but socage in effect, for it is no personal service, but a certain rent;" and Magna Charta respected it in this light when it enacted that no wardships of the lands or body should be claimed by the king in virtue of a tenure by petit serjeanty.

Tenure in burgage is described by Glanvil, and is expressly said by Littleton to be but tenure in socage; and it is where the king or other person is lord of an ancient borough in which the tenements are held by a rent certain. The free socage in which these tenements are held seems to be plainly a remnant of Saxon liberty, which may also account for the great variety of customs affecting many of these lands, the principal and most remarkable of which is called borough-English, so named in