The Land Tenure of England.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3791, 21 February 1881, Page 2

The Land Tenure of England.

There appears to hare subsisted among our ancestors four principal species of lay tenures to which all others may be introduced : 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 in respect of their q.uan? titjr and the time of exacting, them, were either certain or uncertain. Free services were such as were not derogatory to the character of a soldier to perform, as to serve under his lord in time of war, to pay a sum of money, and the like. Base services were such as were only fit for peasants and persons of a servile rank, such as to plough the lord's land, make his hedges, and do other menial duties. The certain services, whether free or base, were such as were stinted in quantity, and could not be exceeded on any pretence, as to pay an annual rental or do certain work iree. The uncertain depended upon unknown contingencies, as to do military service in person, or pay an assessment in lieu of it when called upon, which are free services; or to do whatever the lord should command, which is base or villein service.

These various combinations of services gave rise to the various kinds of tenure. Of these a celebrated authority writing in the time of Henry the Third says, "Tenements are of two kinds, frank tenement and villenage. Of the former some are held freely in consideration of homage or knight service ; others in free socage with the service of fealty only, or with fealty and. homage according to some authorities. Of the latter some are pure, others privileged. Pure villenage is where a man holds upon terms of doing everything required of him, and is always bound to an uncertain service. There is also another kind of villenage holden of the King, from the time the conquest, which is called villein socage, and which is villenage, but of a privileged sort. Such tenants of the King's demesnes have the privilege that they cannot be re» moved from the land while they do the service due; and these villein socmen are properly, called glehae ascriptUii. They perform villein services, but such as are certain and .determined." This account, illustrated as it is by other authorities, proves that there, anciently existed (as. before remarked) four principal kinds of land tenure. And that there were knight service, where the service was free but uucertain ; free soca<?e where it was not only free but certain; pure villenage where it was base in its nature, and uncertain ; and. lastly, villein socage, where it was base but certain; which seems principally to have prevailed among those, who are above described as " tenants of the king's demesnes."

The four kinds of tenure thus enumerated, however, in process of time were described as only three—knight service, free socage and copyhold; which last comprises both the,species of villenage of which we hare Bpoken. These three subsisted in England till the middle of the seventeenth century, and the two last subsist to the present day. The first, most universal, and esteemed the most honourable species of tenure was that by knight service, which differed in very few points, as we shall presently see, from a pure and proper feud, being entirely military, and the general effect of the feudal establishment in England. To make a tenure by knight service, it was necessary that the tenement in-point of quantity, should amount t6" twelve ploughlands (a ploughland was as much as he could plough in a year) ; which was called a knight's fee ; and the value of which is stated to have been £20 per annum in the time of Edward 11. And he who held this proportion of land (or a whole fee) by knight service was bound to attend his lord to the wars for forty days in every year, if called upon, which attendance was his reditas or return, rent, or service for (he land he claimed to hold. If he held less than a knight's fee,; the \ number of days of service was reduced in proportion, and there is reason'to believe that this service was fhe whole that our ancestors meant to subject themselves to;

the other fruits and consequences of this tenure being fraudulently super induced, as the regular (though unforseen) appendages of the feudal system.

In our next we will speak further of the nature of tenures.