A Treatise on Copyholds, and Copyhold Enfranchisement ...

(a)

Scroggs.

grants and donations. And these grantees, being formerly great lords and noblemen, were called barons, and came to Parliament, and from thence the courts so granted are called courts baron, and also the grantees are called lords, and the lands granted are called manors or lordships to this day; though in process of time, by grants and conveyances from such noblemen and barons, the lordships or manors came into the hands of knights and ordinary gentlemen, by purchase, &c., and thus we find them at this day (a).

CHAPTER II.

OF COPYHOLDS AND COPYHOLDERS.

THE student will find all information on the subject of Copyholds in the works of Lord Coke, followed by Scroggs, Fisher, Watkins, and Serjeant Scriven; in Bacon's Abridgement, and Comyn's Digest, title Copyhold; in the first volume of Cruise's Digest, and the second volume of Blackstone's Commentaries; in Fearne's Contingent Remainders, and Preston on Conveyancing; besides many other works which he will meet with, without

very extensive reading, and they will well repay him the time and trouble he may expend upon them; for let him be assured that he cannot in a proper manner perfect himself in this branch of legal learning without at the same time making an intimate acquaintance with all the different tenures by which real property is holden. He will be able also to observe how from time to time constitutional law and the freedom of the subject have been advocated, and their progress carried on in a gradual course from the earliest records of civilized society; and, while he marks the slow transition from semi-barbarous to more cultured times, let him not altogether leave unadmired the peaceable and national means by which it was effected. We are apt to look back to the feodal times in which the copyhold tenure first existed as an æra of unmitigated tyranny on part of the oppressors, and of slavery on part of the oppressed, -this is altogether

erroneous notion; it was against unchecked oppression that man first learned to bind himself in unity with his kind; and, sheltered beneath the battlements, or, if need were, within the halls of his protecting chief, the poor bondsman first felt that he had a home to fight for, and a country to defend.

The condition, however, of copyholders in former days was not enviable; they were

2 Bl. 93.

; or

styled villeins, who, belonging principally to
lords of manors, were either villeins regardant,
that is, annexed to the manor or land
else they were in gross, or at large,—that is,
annexed to the person of the lord, and trans-
ferable by deed from one owner to another.
They could not leave the lord without his
permission; but if they ran away or were
purloined from him, might be claimed and
recovered by action, like beasts or other
chattels. They held indeed small portions
of land by way of sustaining themselves and
families; but it was at the mere will of the
lord, who might dispossess them whenever he
pleased (b).

Villeins, however, in process of time, gained considerable ground upon their lords, and, in particular, strengthened the tenure of their estates to that degree, that they came to have in them an interest in many places full as good, in others, better than their lords-for the good-nature and benevolence of many lords of manors having time out of mind permitted their villeins and their children to enjoy their possessions without interruption,

* The word "villein" is derived from the Latin word villa, because these people usually lived in villages, being employed in husbandry; or, from the Latin word vilis, because the duties which they performed in acknowledgment for their lands was of a humble nature, such as ploughing the lord's lands, &c. &c. so many days in the year.

in a regular course of descent, the common law, of which custom is the life, now gave them title to prescribe against their lords; and, on performance of the same services, to hold their lands, in spite of any determination of the lord's will; for though in general they are still said to hold their estates at the will of the lord, yet it is such a will as is agreeable to the customs of the manor; which customs are preserved and evidenced by the rolls of the several courts baron in which they are entered, or kept on foot by the constant immemorial usage of the several manors in which the lands lie. And as such tenants had nothing to show for their estates but these customs, and admissions in pursuance of them entered on the rolls, or the copies of such entries witnessed by the stewards, they now began to be called tenants by copy of court roll, and their tenure itself a copyhold.

Thus it appears that copyholders are, in truth, no other but villeins, who, by a long series of immemorial encroachments on the lord, have at last established a customary right to those estates which before were held absolutely at the lord's will (c).

(c)

2 Bl. 95.

Copyhold property is said to be parcel of the demesnes of the manor, and must be situate within the manor and have been immemorially demised or demisable by copy of court roll (d). Stalman, 3.

(d)

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