earldoms

In addition to his exaction of homage from the sub- Checks to the power tenants, William took other effective measures to keep the of the feudagreat feudatories in check. The lordships which he tories. bestowed upon his principal barons were scattered over the kingdom, so that in no one district should the territories of one man be great enough to tempt him to rebellion. An unforeseen but very important result of this arrangement was the necessity under which the nobles found themselves of combining with one another, and ultimately of seeking the help of the people, in order to resist the royal power. Thus the Old-English parliamentary instincts which the Conquest for a while checked were again awakened and strengthened. William abolished the great Great carldoms which had threatened the integrity of the kingdom abolished. under Eadward, and, reverting to the earlier English practice, restricted the jurisdiction of the carl to a single shire.” The government of the shire-judicial, military, and financial-was, moreover, practically executed by the sheriff who was directly responsible to the King. An apparent exception to the general policy pursued by the Conqueror occurs in the creation of the three palatine counties of Counties Chester, Durham, and Kent. The extraordinary powers thus conferred were, however, requisite for the defence of the kingdom against attacks from Wales, Scotland, and the Continent respectively, and two of the persons entrusted with them were ecclesiastics, who could not become the founders of families. A further check to the power of the baronage resulted from the maintenance in full vigour of the popular courts of the Shire and the Hundred, by which the private manorial jurisdictions of the nobles were restrained, as far as possible, within narrow limits.

1 From Domesday we learn that the vast possessions of the king's brothers, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and Robert, Count of Mortain, were scattered over seventeen and nineteen counties respectively. Eudes the steward (dapifer) held fiefs in twelve counties. Hugh (Lupus) of Avranches held lands in twenty-one counties, exclusive of those in his palatine earldom of Chester. See Lappenberg, England under the Normans (by Thorpe), p. 201.

Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv. 71.

3 This one revolution of the Conqueror did more than any other one cause to make England an united kingdom and keep it from falling asunder like France and Germany.'-Ibid.

Palatine.

Feudal.

tenures.

Tenure by knight

service.

Investiture.

Homage.

The political and social influence of the system of feudal tenure gradually established in England under the Conqueror and his son Rufus has been so vast and so enduring, that it is desirable to take a glance at its outline, in order to a right understanding of the development of our constitution and laws. The feudal tenures were, indeed, abolished by Act of Parliament in the reign of Charles II., but the spirit of the system still lives on. It stands revealed in the theory of our law that all the lands and tenements in England in the hands of subjects are holden mediately or immediately of the King;' in the law of primogeniture, as applied to the inheritance of real estate; and in the custom of family settlements, by which the old law of entail is practically continued.

Prior to the Conquest all lands had been subject to the trinoda necessitas. This obligation still continued. But after the feudal system of tenure had been fully established, all lands were held subject to certain additional obligations, which were due either to the King (not as sovereign, but as feudal lord) from the original grantees, called tenants-inchief (tenentes in capite), or to the tenants-in-chief themselves from their under tenants. Of these obligations the most honourable was that of knight-service. This was the tenure by which the King granted out fiefs to his followers, and by which they in turn provided for their own military retainers. The lands of the bishops and dignified ecclesiastics, and of most of the religious foundations, were also held by this tenure. A few exceptions only were made in favour of lands which had been immemorially held in frankalmoign, or free-alms.

On the grant of a fief, the tenant was publicly invested with the land by a symbolical or actual delivery, termed livery of seisin. He then did homage, so called from the

1 Coke upon Littleton, cap. 1, sec. I.

The tenants-in-chief, including the ecclesiastical corporations, enumerated in Domesday, amounted to about fifteen hundred. The under-tenants were about eight thousand in number, and largely consisted of the ousted English owners, who had been reduced from the degree of thegn to the condition of simple freeholders or franklins, holding under a Norman lord.

words used in the ceremony: 'Je deveigne votre homme.' Humbly kneeling before his lord, with sword ungirt and head uncovered, he placed his hands between those of his lord, and pronounced the words: "I become your man from this day forward, of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear to you faith for the tenements I claim to hold of you.'1 The lord then kissed his vassal on the check and received Fealty. the oath of fealty. In the case of a sub-tenant (vavassor), his oath of fealty was guarded by a reservation of the faith due to his sovereign lord the King. For every portion of land of the annual value of £20, which constituted a knight's fee, the tenant was bound, whenever required, to render the services of a knight properly armed and accoutred, to serve in the field forty days at his own expense. In addition to service in war-time, the tenants-inchief were also bound to attend the King's court at the three great festivals of the year; and on the same principle every mesne lord having two or more freehold tenants had a right to compel their attendance (termed 'suit of court,' from suivre, to follow) at the court-baron of the manor,' as the lordship of pre-Norman times was now termed.

Tenure by knight-service was also subject to several Incidents of other incidents of a burdensome character, the unfair and tenure by

1 Littleton, (temp. Edw. IV.) 1. i. c. 10, s. 85. Glanvill (temp. Hen. II.) gives the form thus:-Fieri autem debet homagium sub hac forma, scilicet ut is qui homagium facere debet, ita fiat homo domini sui, quod fidem illi portet, de illo tenemento unde homagium suum praestat, et quod ejus in omnibus terrenum honorem servet, salva fide debita domino regi et haeredibus suis.'Lib. ix. c. I.

2 Gilbert, Tenures, 431 et seq. 66 'The name manor is of Norman origin, but the estate to which it was given existed in its essential character long before the Conquest; it received a new name as the shire also did, but neither the one nor the other was created by this change. The local jurisdictions of the thegns who had grants of sac and soc, or who exercised judicial functions amongst their free neighbours, were identical with the manorial jurisdictions of the new owners. It may be conjectured with great probability that in many cases the weaker freemen, who had either willingly or under constraint attended the courts of their great neighbours, were now, under the general infusion of feudal principle, regarded as holding their lands of them as lords; it is not less probable that in a great number of grants the right to suit and service from small landowners passed from the king to the receiver of the fief as a matter of course; but it is certain that even before the Conquest such a proceeding was not uncommon.'-Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 273.

knight

service.

Aids.

Relief and Primer seisin.

oppressive exaction of which by the Norman and earlier -Angevin kings supplied one of the chief incentives to the barons who wrested the Great Charter from King John. These incidental burdens were:

I. The tenant was at first expected, and afterwards obliged, to render to his immediate lord certain contributions termed Aids. These, which were to be reasonable in amount, were due on three special occasions-to ransom the lord's person from captivity; to make his eldest son a knight; and to provide a suitable portion for his eldest daughter on her marriage. The Stat. of Westminster I. (3 Edw. I.) fixed the reasonable aid at 20s. for every knight's fee, and for every 20 value of land in socage.

2. On the death of the tenant, his fief descended to his heir, sons being preferred to daughters, and the elder to the younger son. But before taking up his ancestor's estate, the heir, if of age, had to pay a fine called a Relief, which closely resembled and was apparently a feudalized form of the ancient English heriot. By demanding arbitrary and exorbitant reliefs the Norman kings, William Rufus especially, often obliged the heir in effect to purchase or redeem his lands. This abuse was specially provided against in the charter of Henry I., in which the King promised to exact, and required his tenants to exact from their under-tenants, only the accustomed and legal reliefs." Glanvill, in the reign of Henry II., tells us that the reasonable relief for a knight's fee was 100s., but that the

1 Glanvill, lib. ix. c. 8; Magna Charta, c. 12 (infra, ch. iv).

The change of the heriot to the relief implies a suspension of ownership and carries with it the custom of livery of seisin. The heriot was the payment of a debt from the dead man to his lord [deriving its origin from the war-horse and spear given by the ancient princeps to each member of his comitatus]; his son succeeded him by alodial right. The relief was paid by the heir before he could obtain his father's lands; between the death of the father and livery of seisin to the son the right of the overlord had entered, the ownership was to a certain extent resumed, and the succession of the heir took somewhat of the character of a new grant.'-Stubbs, Const. Ilist. i. 261.

3 'Si quis baronum, comitum meorum sive aliorum qui de me tenent, mortuus fuerit, haeres suus non redimet terram suam sicut faciebat tempore fratris mei, sed justa et legitima relevatione relevabit eam. Similiter et homines baronum meorum justa et legitima relevatione relevabunt terras suas de dominis suis.'— Chart. Hen. I., Thorpe, Anc. Laws and Inst. 215.

sum due for a barony varied 'juxta voluntatem et misericordiam domini regis.' The amount was not finally fixed till Magna Charta defined the antiquum relevium as £100 for a barony, 100s. for a knight's fee.

Tenants-in-chief were subject to a kind of additional relief termed primer seisin, which consisted in the right of the King, on the death of one of his tenants leaving an heir of full age, to receive one year's profits of the inherited land.

3. If the heir were under age, the lord was entitled, Wardship. under the name of Wardship, to the custody of his body and lands, without any account of the profits. At the age of twenty-one in males, and sixteen in females, the wards were entitled to ousterlemain or 'sue out their livery '--that is, to require delivery of their lands out of their guardian's hands, on payment of half a year's profits in lieu of all reliefs and primer seisins.*

4. The lord also possessed the right of disposing of his Marriage. female wards in marriage. The rejection by the ward of a suitable match incurred the forfeiture of a sum of money equal to the value of the marriage—that is, as much as the suitor was willing to pay down to the lord as the price of the alliance. If the ward presumed to marry without the lord's consent, she forfeited double the market

1 Glanvill, lib. ix. c. 4. Infra, ch. iv.

Coke upon Littleton, 77A. It was by analogy to the feudal incident of Primer seisin, that the Popes-who, in carrying out Hildebrand's ideas, claimed to be feudal lords of the lands of the church-subsequently exacted from every beneficed clergyman in England the first-fruits of his benefice.

• Wardship and marriage, the most oppressive of feudal exactions, seem not to have been ordinary feudal incidents, but nearly peculiar to Normandy and England (Hallam, Midd. Ages, i. 178). From the charter of Henry I. (injra, p. 78), it would appear that, so far as they were sources of pecuniary advantage, they were not claimed even in England under William the Conqueror, but were among the novel exactions introduced by William Rufus." Though abolished by Henry I., they were soon re-introduced. The Assize of Northampton, c. 4, (A.D. 1176) expressly gave the wardship of lands to the lord. The feudal lawyers justified the right of wardship on the grounds: as to the land, that the infant heir being incapable of rendering the military service, ought not to hold the fief; as to the person of the heir, that it was the interest of the lord to properly educate him for military service. Quis,' says Fortescue, 'infantem talem in actibus bellicis, quos facere ratione tenurae suae ipse astringitur domino feodi, melius instruere poterit aut velit quam dominus ille, cui ab eo servitium tale debetur ?'-De Laudibus Leg. Angl. p. 105.