accustomed to render; and differed only in their greater precision from the obligations incident to English alodial lands. Whatever the changes may have been, they were certainly made not of William's own mere motion* but with the advice and consent of the Legislature of the kingdom. About twenty years after the battle of Hastings, under the apprehension of frequently threatened invasion by the pirates of the north, and with domestic tranquillity far from assured, the Conqueror effected a complete military and financial organization of his realm. He instituted that great survey, the record of which still remains. as the most precious memorial of our early history. This famous book long served as the muster roll of the nation. It was the muniment of title to the hereditary revenue of the Crown. It was the authority by which all disputes relating to land between subject and subject were decided. This survey was ordered by the King in his Court at Gloucester at Christmas, 1085, after grave deliberation with his Great Council of Proceres: the recorded results were brought to him at Winchester at the following Easter. On the first of the following August the King held his "And there there came before him his Barons and all landholders who were of any account, of whatsoever fief they were; and they were all made his men, and swore to him fidelity against all men." This event may be taken as marking the commencement of English feudalism; and I now proceed to describe briefly, and so far as my present purpose requires, the tenures which were thus recognized. Court at Salisbury. "Tenures," Lord Bacon observes, " are of two natures, the one containing matter of protection, the other matter *Ed. Rev., xxvi. 353. + Annals of Waverley, cited in I Lords' Report, 34. Works, vii. 547. of profit. That of protection is likewise double, divine protection and military. The divine protection is chiefly procured by the prayers of holy and devout men. This begat the tenure in frankalmoigne which, though in burthen it is less than socage, yet in virtue it is more than a knight's service. For we read how, during the while Moses in the Mount held up his hands, the Hebrews prevailed in battle as well as that, when Elias prayed, rain came after drought, which made the plough go: so that I hold the tenure in frankalmoigne in the first institution indifferent to knight-service and socage." It seems, indeed, scarcely accurate to describe frankalmoigne as a tenure. It was rather a continuance of the old alodial property kept alive for the purposes of the Church, and limited to ecclesiastical property alone. So far as it is a tenure, frankalmoigne is not feudal, but spiritual. Its services were indefinite and of a religious nature, consisting, until the duty was altered by Act of Parliament at the Reformation, in the obligation to pray for the souls of the donor and his heirs, dead or alive. It required no fealty, and implied no burthensome incidents of aid or of scutage. For a breach of its obligations no other remedy* was provided than the interference of the Bishop. By the Statute of Quia Emptores no subject may grant lands in perpetuity to hold of himself. But tenure in frankalmoigne is necessarily of the grantor and his heirs, and is in perpetuity. It follows, therefore, that, since 1290,† the Crown alone can grant lands by this tenure. The tenure is expressly preserved in the Act of Charles the Second for the abolition of the military tenures, and it subsists in many instances at this day.+ The military tenures were of two kinds, grand serjeanty§ I Stephen, Com., 214. Zb., 215. + 18 Edw. I. c. I. and knight-service. The former is of little historical importance. Its obligation was the rendering of some specified service of an honorary nature and connected with the Royal person. To carry the King's banner or his lance, or to lead his army, or to carry his sword before him at his coronation, are some of the examples which Littleton gives of this tenure. These services are still reserved by the Statute of Charles the Second, although the tenure in other respects is converted into free socage. But the great military tenure of the kingdom was knight-service. The kingdom was divided into portions held of the Crown and hereditary. Each such portion was termed a Knight's Fee, and was required to supply, on the summons of the King, a mounted and armed warrior, to attend, at his own cost, during forty days in each year, the King upon his military expeditions, wherever he went. The total number of such fees was about 60,000; and thus the King could rely on the services of a fully equipped army of 60,000 knights. We are not, however, to understand that 60,000 soldiers were, either at the Conquest or afterwards, actually quartered throughout the country. The Knight's Fee was not meant to express either any mode of territorial settlement or any definite amount of property. It merely denoted the unit of taxation. Any person might hold any number of Knight's Fees, provided he discharged the full obligation of his tenure; and each fee might be divided into any number of parts, each of which was charged with its proper proportion of the entire burthen. The tenants in chief were, as a body, responsible for the services of 60,000 knights. Whether each tenant in chief kept on his estate the stipulated number, or any other number, was a matter for his own consideration. He might underlet his lands to a greater number of knights than he was bound to produce. He might, if he thought fit, retain all or most of his land in his own hands, and make up the number of his knights as best he could when the summons came. All that the Crown required was the services of the proper contingent. The mode of providing that contingent rested with the feudatories themselves. Their general treatment of their lands was similar to the mode in which the King treated his lands. Each tenant in chief retained as much land as he could conveniently occupy, and granted the remainder by some form of free tenure. His demesne lands were cultivated by his villeins, some of whom ultimately became copyholders. His free tenants stood in the same relation, and were bound by similar obligations to him as he to the King. Each of these tenants might repeat this process, and establish similar relations between himself and those who held of him. This practice continued until 1290, when it was provided by the Statute Quia Emptores that all future grants should be held not of the grantor but of the original lord. The third species of tenure with which we are now concerned is socage. The characteristic of this tenure was that its services were definite, and that they were free. In the former respect it differed from knight-service, in the latter from villenage. The nature of the services varied in each case. To pay a fixed yearly sum, or to plough for three days the lord's lands, are examples of their obligations. When the land was held of the King, and the service was the annual render of a bow, a lance, a pair of mail gloves, or some similar instrument of war, this form of socage was called petit serjeanty.* As compared with the tenure of knight-service, the principal advantage of socage seems to have been its freedom from escuage and from wardship and marriage. * Co. Lit., 108, a. When lands of whatever tenure were held of any lord immediately and without any intervening tenancy, they were said to be held in capite. This expression, although it was applicable to any lord, was most frequently used in reference to the tenants of the Crown. With them, as with all others, it denoted the proximity of the tenure, and not the character of the service. By degrees its original meaning became obscured, and it was used to denote a special form of tenure. Thus Queen Elizabeth, in the forty-second year of her reign,* granted to certain persons lands in Wiltshire" to hold of us our heirs and successors as of our Manour of East Greenwich in the County of Kent by fealty only in free and common socage, and not in capite or by military service." The same form occurs in several other patents of that reign. In the Act for the Abolition of Military Tenures + tenure in capite is expressly abolished. This singular enactment has not been very strictly construed, and most of the land in the kingdom is now in fact held in capite. But the prohibition of the Act still remains, an example of the incredible carelessness with which legislation on matters affecting the whole property of the country has sometimes been conducted, and a warning. against accepting the records of a later age as conclusive evidence of the acts or the customs of antiquity. The incidents of tenure. § 3. The tenants in chief of the Crown had besides their stipulated services other obligations. They were the King's men, his barons as they were emphatically called. They had done him homage, and sworn to him fealty. Between him and them there subsisted a very peculiar relation. It had all the personal intimacy of the relation between the patron and the client. It had some * Madox, Hist. Exch., i. 821. + 12 Car. II. c. 24. See Hallam, Middle Ages, iii. 240. |