Another attendant of tenure by knight-service was the fines on alienation. A feudatory could not originally substitute a new tenant, without the consent of the lord: and, the lord could not alienate his seignory without the consent of his tenant, which was called attornment. The restraint on the lord soon wore away; that on the tenant continued longer. For, when everything came in time to be bought and sold, the lords would not grant a licence to alien, without a fine being paid; for if it was reasonable for the heir to pay a relief, it was more reasonable that a stranger should make an acknowledgment on his admission to a newly-purchased feud.

Escheat took place if the tenant died without heirs of his blood, or if his blood was corrupted by attainder of treason or felony. The land thereupon escheated or fell back to the lord, the tenure being determined by breach of the original condition. In the one case, there were no heirs of the blood of the first feudatory; in the other, the tenant forfeited the feud, which he held under the implied condition that he should not be a traitor or a felon.

These were the principal consequences of knight-service: of which nature was grand serjeanty, magnum servitium, whereby the tenant was bound, instead of serving the king generally in his wars, to do some special service to him in person; as to carry his banner, his sword, or the like; or to be his butler, champion, or other officer, at his coronation. Tenure by cornage which was to wind a horn when the Scots entered the land, was a species of grand serjeanty.

The personal attendance in knight-service growing inconvenient, the tenants found means of compounding for it; first by sending others in their stead, and in time by making a pecuniary satisfaction in lieu thereof; which at last came to be levied by assessments, at so much for every knight's fee; and was called scutagium, or escuage. This was first taken in the reign of Hen. II., for his expedition to Toulouse; but soon came to be universal; our kings, when they went to war, levying scutages to defray their expenses, and to hire troops. Which prerogative being greatly abused, it became matter of national clamour; so that King John was obliged to consent, by Magna Charta, that no scutage should be imposed without consent of parliament.

K

These scutages became ultimately the groundwork of all succeeding subsidies, and the land-tax of later times.

Knight-service thus degenerating into assessment, all the advantages of the feudal constitution were destroyed, and nothing but the hardships remained. Instead of forming a national militia composed of barons, knights, and gentlemen, the system was nothing else but a means of raising money to pay mercenaries. The families of all our nobility and gentry groaned under the burdens which were laid upon them by the Norman lawyers. For, besides scutages, they might be called upon for aids, whenever the eldest son of the lord was to be knighted or his eldest daughter married. The heir was plundered of the first emoluments of his inheritance, by way of relief and primer seisin ; and if a minor, he found, after he was out of wardship, his woods decayed, houses fallen down, lands barren; and yet to reduce him still further, he had to pay half-a-year's profits as a fine for suing out his ouster le main, or livery; that is, the delivery of his lands from his guardian's hands; and also the price or value of his marriage, if he refused such wife as his guardian had bartered for, and imposed upon him; or twice that value if he married another woman. Add to this, the honour of knighthood, to make his poverty more completely splendid. And when by these deductions his fortune was so shattered, 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, called aloud for a remedy in a nation that boasted of its freedom. James I. consented to abolish all the feudal grievances, receiving as compensation for the loss which the crown and other lords would sustain, an annual fee-farm rent, to be inseparably annexed to the crown and assured to the inferior lords, out of every knight's fee. An expedient much more just than the hereditary excise, which was afterwards made the principal equivalent. For at length the military tenures were, by 12 Car. II. c. 24, destroyed at one blow; the Court of Wards and Liveries, which ascertained by inquisitio post mortem the value and tenure of estates and age of the wards, so as to fix the relief and primer seisins, was abolished; values and forfeitures of marriages and fines for alienations were taken away, and all tenures, with some excep

tions, turned into free and common socage; not at the expense of the crown and inferior lords, but, as it has since turned out at the expense of the people.

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE MODERN ENGLISH TENURES.

ALTHOUGH the oppressive part of the feudal constitution was done away by 12 Car. II. c. 24, socage and frankalmoign, grand serjeanty, and the tenure by copy of court-roll, were reserved; all tenures, indeed, except frankalmoign, grand serjeanty, and copyhold, were reduced to free and common socage.

Socage, in its general signification, denotes a tenure by any determinate service; being put in opposition to knight-service, where the render was precarious; and is generally considered to be a relic of Saxon liberty; retained by such persons as had neither forfeited their estates to the crown, nor been obliged to exchange their tenure for the more bonourable, but more burdensome tenure of knight-service. As its distinguishing mark is the having its services ascertained, it includes all other methods of holding land by invariable rents or duties: and, in particular, petit serjeanty, tenure in burgage, and guvelkind.

Grand serjeanty is not abolished by the statute of Charles II., but only its appendages. Petit serjeanty resembles it; for as the former is a personal service, so the other is a rent or render, both tending to some purpose relative to the person of the sovereign. Thus, the Dukes of Marlborough and Wellington hold the estates granted to their ancestors for their public services, by the tenure of petit serjeanty, and by the annual render of a small flag.

Tenure in burgage is where the king or other person is lord of an ancient borough, in which the tenements are held by a rent certain, and is indeed only a kind of town socage; as common socage, by which other lands are holden, is usually of a rural nature.

Tenure in gavelkind is met with in Kent, and its properties

are various. The principal one was, that the estate did not escheat in case of attainder; the maxim being, "the father to "the bough, the son to the plough." Gavelkind lands also descend, not to the eldest, youngest, or any one son only, but to all the sons together.

This socage tenure will also be seen to partake of a feudal nature, if we compare its incidents with those of knight-service.

1. Both were held of superior lords. 2. Both were subject to the feudal return, or service of some sort arising from the original grant to the tenant.' 3. Both were subject to the oath of fealty. 4. Socage was subject to aids for knighting the son and marrying the eldest daughter. 5. Relief was due upon socage, as upon tenure in chivalry: socage relief being one year's rent, be the same either great or small: and due even though the heir was under age, because the lord had no wardship over him. 6. Primer seisin was incident to the king's socage tenants, but was entirely abolished by the statute of Charles II. 7. Wardship is also incident to socage; but differently from that incident to knight-service. For if the inheritance descends to an infant under fourteen, the wardship of him does not, nor ever did, belong to the lord of the fee; but his nearest relation shall be his guardian in socage, and have the custody of his land and body till he arrives at the age of fourteen, at which age this wardship ceases; and the heir may call his guardian to account; for at this age the law supposes him capable of choosing a guardian for himself. It was in this particular of wardship, as also in that of marriage, that socage had so much the advantage of military tenure. But there was this disadvantage : that heirs, being left to choose their own guardians, might make an improvident choice. And, therefore, when nearly all our other tenures were turned into socage, the 12 Car. II. c. 24, enacted, that it should be in the power of any father by will to appoint a guardian, till his child should attain the age of twenty-one. And, if no such appointment be made, the Chancery Division of the High Court will name a guardian, to prevent an infant heir from exposing himself to ruin. 8. The valor maritagii was not in socage any advantage to the guardian, but rather the reverse. For if he married his ward under fourteen, he was bound to account to him for the value of the

marriage, even though he took nothing for it, unless he married him to advantage. 9. Fines for alienation were due for lands holden of the king in copite by socage, as well as knight-service. 10. Escheuts are equally incident to socage, as to knight-service.

This much for the two species of tenure, under which almost all the lands of the kingdom were holden till the Restoration; when knight-service was abolished and one universal tenure of free and common socage introduced.

The other great division of tenure, is villein socage, e, or villenage, which is either pure or privileged; whence have arisen two other modern tenures.

From pure villenage has sprung copyhold; or tenure by copy of court-roll at the will of the lord: in order to obtain a clear idea of which, let us take a short view of the origin of manors, which are in substance as ancient as the Saxon constitution.

A manor, manerium, a manendo, because the usual residence of the owner, seems to have been a district of ground, held by great personages, who kept in their own hands so much land as was necessary for the use of their families, hence called terra dominicales, or demesne lands; the other, or tenemental, lands being distributed among their tenants. The latter was either lookland, held by deed for certain rents and free-services, from which have arisen the freehold tenants who hold of particular manors; or folk-land, which was held by no assurance in writing, but distributed among the common folk at the pleasure of the lord, and resumed at his discretion. The residue of the manor was the lord's waste, and served for common of pasture to the lord and his tenants.

In early times the great barons granted out smaller manors to be holden of themselves: and these still are held under a lord, whose seignory is frequently termed an honour. In imitation whereof these inferior lords carved out to others still more minute estates, to be held of themselves, and were so proceeding downwards in infinitum, till the superior lords observed that by this subinfeudation they lost all their feudal profits. This occasioned, first, a provision in Magna Charta, that no man should either give or sell his land, without reserving sufficient to answer the demands of his lord; and, afterwards, the statute