woman. Add to this, the untimely and expensive honour of knighthood, to make his poverty more completely splendid. And when by these deductions his fortune was so shattered and ruined, that perhaps he was obliged to sell his patrimony, he had not even that poor privilege allowed him, without paying an exorbitant fine for a licence of alienation.

A slavery so complicated, and so extensive as this, called aloud for a remedy in a nation that boasted of its freedom. Palliatives were from time to time applied by successive acts of parliament, which assuaged some temporary grievances. Til at length the humanity of king James I. consented, in consideration of a proper equivalent, to abolish them all; though the plan proceeded not to effect; in like manner as he had formed a scheme, and began to put it in execution, for removing the feudal grievance of heritable jurisdictions in Scotland, which has since been pursued and effected by the statute 20 Geo. II. c. 43. King James's plan for exchanging our military tenures seems to have been nearly the same as that which has been since pursued; only with this difference, that, by way of compensation for the loss which the crown and other lords would sustain, an annual fee-farm rent was to have been settled and inseparably annexed to the crown and assured to the inferior lords, payable out of every knight's fee within their respective seignories. An expedient, seemingly much better than the hereditary excise, which was afterwards made the principal equivalent for these concessions. For at length the military tenures, with all their heavy appendages, having during the usurpation been discontinued, were destroyed at one blow by the statute 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 taken away. And that all sorts of tenures, held of the king or others, be turned into free and common socage; save only tenures in frankalmoign, copyholds, and the honorary ser vices (without the slavish part) of grand serjeanty." A statute, which was a greater acquisition to the civil property

of this kingdom than even magna charta itself: since that only pruned the luxuriances that had grown out of the military tenures, and thereby preserved them in vigour; but the statute of king Charles extirpated the whole, and demolished both root and branches.

QUESTIONS.

Explain the meaning of the words "tenement," "tenant," and tenure," ," with reference to the fundamental maxim of the feudal

system.

Who was Lord Paramount? Mesne Lord? Tenant Paravail ? What were the four species of lay tenures, existing in the times of our ancestors, to which all the rest may be reduced?

What were the two kinds of services with respect to quality ?— with respect to their quantity, and the mode of exacting them? What was knight-service?

What was free socage?

What was pure villenage?

What was villein-socage?

What were the seven fruits and consequences of knight-service?

What was livery of seisin ?

What were aids?

What were reliefs?

What was primer seisin ?

What were wardships?

What was marriage?

What were fines for alienation?

What was escheat?

What was grand serjeanty?

Explain the origin, history, and consequences of escuage?

When were the military tenures abolished, and how?

THE MODERN ENGLISH TENURES.

ALTHOUGH, by the means that were mentioned in the preceding pages, the oppressive or military part of the feudal constitution was happily done away, yet we are not to imagine that the constitution itself was utterly laid aside, and a new one introduced in its room: since by the statute 12 Car. II. the tenures of socage and frankalmoign, the honorary services of grand serjeanty, and the tenure by copy of court-roll were reserved; nay, all tenures in general, except frankalmoign, grand serjeanty, and copyhold, were reduced to one general species of tenure, then well known, and subsisting, called FREE AND COMMON SOCAGE. And this, being sprung from the same feudal original as the rest, demonstrates the necessity of fully contemplating that ancient system; since it is that alone to which we can recur, to explain any seeming or real difficulties, that may arise in our present mode of tenure.

The military tenure, or that by knight-service, consisted of what were reputed the most free and honourable services, but which in their nature were unavoidably uncertain in respect to the time of their performance. The second species of tenure, or free socage, consisted also of free and honourable services; but such as were liquidated and reduced to an absolute certainty. And this tenure not only subsists to this day, but has in a manner absorbed and swallowed up, since the statute of Charles the second, almost every other species of tenure.

It seems probable that the socage tenures were the 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, at the same time, more burthensome, tenure of knight-service. This is peculiarly remarkable in the tenure which prevails in Kent, called gavelkind, which is generally acknowledged

to be a species of socage tenure; the preservation whereof inviolate 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.

Thus much for the two grand species of tenure, under which almost all the free lands of the kingdom were holden till the restoration in 1660, when the former was abolished and sunk into the latter: so that the lands of both sorts are now holden by one universal tenure of free and common socage.

The other grand division of tenure mentioned by Bracton, as cited in the preceding chapter, is that of villenage, as contradistinguished from liberum tenementum, or frank tenure. And this, we may remember, he subdivided into two classes, pure and privileged villenage: from whence have arisen two other species of our modern tenures.

III. From the tenure of pure villenage have sprung our present copyhold tenures, or tenure by copy of court roll at the will of the lord: in order to obtain a clear idea of which, it will be previously necessary to take a short view of the original and nature of manors.

Manors are in substance as ancient as the Saxon constitution, though perhaps differing a little, in some immaterial circumstances, from those that exist at this day just as we observed of feuds, that they were partly known to our ancestors, even before the Norman conquest. A manor, manerium, a manendo, because the usual residence of the owner, seems to have been a district of ground, held by lords or great personages; who kept in their own hands so much land as was necessary for the use of their families, which were called terræ dominicales, or demesne lands; being occupied by the lord, or dominus manerii, and his The other, or tenemental, lands they distributed among their tenants: which from the different modes of tenure were distinguished by two different names. First, book-land, or charter-land, which was held by deed under certain rents and free-services, and in effect differed nothing from the free socage lands: and from hence have arisen most of the freehold tenants who hold of particular manors, and owe suit and service to the same. The other species was called folk-land, which was held by no assurance in writing, but distributed among the common folk or people at the pleasure of the lord, and resumed at his discretion;

servants.

being indeed land held in villenage, which we shall presently describe more at large. The residue of the manor being uncultivated, was termed the lord's waste, and served for public roads, and for common or pasture to the lord and his tenants. Manors were formerly called baronies, as they still are lordships: and each lord or baron was empowered to hold a domestic court, called the court-baron, for redressing misdemeanours and nuisances within the manor; and for settling disputes of property among the tenants. This court is an inseparable ingredient of every manor; and if the number of suitors should so fail as not to leave sufficient to make a jury or homage, that is, two tenants at least, the manor itself is lost.

Now with regard to the folk-land, or estates held in villenage, this was a species of tenure neither strictly feudal, Norman, or Saxon; but mixed and compounded of them all : and which also, on account of the heriots that usually attend it, may seem to have somewhat Danish in its composition. Under the Saxon government there were, as sir William Temple speaks, a sort of people in a condition of downright servitude, used and employed in the most servile works, and belonging, both they, their children, and effects, to the lord of the soil, like the rest of the cattle or stock upon it. These seem to have been those who held what was called the folk-land, from which they were removeable at the lord's pleasure. On the arrival of the Normans here, it seems not improbable, that they, who were strangers to any other than a feudal state, might give some sparks of enfranchisement to such wretched persons as fell to their share, by admitting them, as well as others, to the oath of fealty; which conferred a right of protection, and raised the tenant to a kind of estate superior to downright slavery, but inferior to every other condition. This they called villenage, and the tenants villeins, either from the word vilis, or else, as sir Edward Coke tells us, a villa, because they lived chiefly in villages, and were employed in rustic works of the most sordid kind: resembling the Spartan helotes, to whom alone the culture of lands was consigned; their rugged masters, like our northern ancestors, esteeming war the only honourable employment of mankind.

These villeins, belonging principally to lords of manors, were either villeins regardant, that is, annexed to the manor or land or else they were in gross, or at large, that is,