Tenure table.
Tenure – tenancy access to land from feudal to early modern times. (after Overton, Revolution, p. 32.)
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Free tenure: Services fixed in extent and duration.
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Unfree tenure: ‘Villein’ or base tenure. The nature of the services due (to the lord or church) was not fixed. Initially, the villein tenant had no legal right to land, later de facto rights were bestowed according to the customs of particular manors
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Chivalry: Knight tenure. The knight held land in return for an obligation to provide men-at-arms for the king.
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Spiritual:
Spiritual and religious services were provided by the church in exchange for their lands.
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Socage:
A variety of services were provided by petty knights, including working on the lands of the superior lord.
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Copyhold:
By the end of the fifteenth century, the royal courts assisted in disputes over villein tenure. Records were made of land transfer, and the name of villein tenure gradually changed to ‘copyhold.’ Tenure continued to be regulated by local custom. |
At will:
Early in the feudal period the villein held lands in return for any services that the lord demanded ‘at will.’ This form of tenure became less and less frequent.
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Crown & Private lands: Although the crown continued to own land, most land came to be held in private ownership. Several monarchs sold ‘crown’ lands in order to generate revenue.
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Beneficial lease: Long term leases, permitting land to be held by successive generations, became usual after the seventeenth century
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System of Estates table.
Estates: principles governing duration of tenancy from feudal to early modern times (after Overton, Revolution, p. 33.)
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Freehold – initially held only by someone who had held free tenure. These represented the minority of estates.
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Non-freehold – the majority of estates – held in lieu of services to landlords.
See: Escheat, Enfeoffment . | ||||
Life – land could be held only for the life of a specified tenant. The tenancy had to be renegotiated at intervals.
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Fee tail: Restrictions governed inheritance, usually through direct descendants
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Simple fee:
Totality of ownership.
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Of grantee:
Land could be held only for the life of the original tenant (grantee)
Beneficial leases were introduced in the seventeenth century.
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Pur autre vie: Land could be held only for the life of the original tenant, his wife, or heir.
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At will:
Land was held at the discretion of the lord, in exchange for services at the lord’s demand. The tenant had no legal rights to the land.
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Years:
Land might be held for a term of several years, but the tenant had no rights under the law (holding neither a recognised tenure nor estate.)
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back to: The Manorial economy.
Under the English feudal system several different forms of land tenure existed, each effectively a contract with differing rights and duties attached thereto. Such tenures could be either free-hold, signifying that they were hereditable or perpetual, or non-free where the tenancy terminated on the tenant's death or at an earlier specified period. The main varieties are:
Military tenure
(Generally freehold)
by barony (per baroniam). Such tenure constituted the holder a feudal baron, and was the highest degree of tenure. It imposed duties of military service and required attendance at parliament. All such holders were necessarily tenants-in-chief.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_feudal_barony
by knight-service. This was a tenure ranking below barony, and was likewise for military service, of a lesser extent. It could be held in capite from the king or as a mesne tenancy from a tenant-in-chief.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight-service
by castle-guard. This was a form of military service which involved guarding a nearby castle for a specified number of days per year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle-guard
by scutage where the military service obligations had been commuted, or replaced, by money payments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutage
Non-military tenure
by serjeanty. Such tenure was in return for acting as a servant to the king, in a non-military capacity. Service in a ceremonial form is termed "grand serjeanty" whilst that of a more functional or menial nature is termed "petty serjeanty".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serjeanty
by frankalmoinage, generally a tenure restricted to clerics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankalmoin
by fee-farm, a grant of the right to collect and retain revenues in return for a fixed rent. Usually a royal grant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_(revenue_leasing)
by copyhold, where the duties and obligations were tailored to the requirements of the lord of the manor and a copy of the terms agreed was entered on the roll of the manorial court as a record.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyhold
by socage. A form of tenure, involving payment in produce or in money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socage
Quit-rent. The payment of an annual fee in exchange for freedom from all other feudal obligations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quit-rent
Uncategorised
In paragio, a form of tenure frequently appearing in Domesday Book. (Coolf tenuit in paragio de rege, manor of Welige, IoW).
Free burgage, tenure within a town or city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgage
Curtesy tenure. A tenant "by the curtesy of England", being a widower of a wife by whom he has issue by her born alive, in respect of her enseized right in land, generally originating in a paternal inheritance. Roger Bigod claimed it unsuccessfully on the death of his wife Aliva.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtesy_tenure
Tenant-at-will. Such tenant had no security of tenure whatsoever. It developed into the more secure "copyhold tenure", where the terms were set out in an entry on the manorial roll.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leasehold_estate#Tenancy_at_will
Gavelkind. Frequently found in mediaeval Kent, "held according to the custom of gavelkind". It withdrew a dower from a widow if she remarried.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavelkind
Fee simple, a tenure with no service obligations attached which could be a free-holding (i.e. hereditable) or non-free (expiring on the tenant's death). On the abolition of feudal tenure in 1660, all existing tenures were converted to this tenure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudal_land_tenure_in_England
Leasehold
A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to hold land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord. Although a tenant does hold rights to real property, a leasehold estate is typically considered personal property.
Leasehold is a form of land tenure or property tenure where one party buys the right to occupy land or a building for a given length of time. As lease is a legal estate, leasehold estate can be bought and sold on the open market. A leasehold thus differs from a freehold or fee simple where the ownership of a property is purchased outright and thereafter held for an indeterminate length of time, and also differs from a tenancy where a property is let (rented) on a periodic basis such as weekly or monthly.
Until the end of the lease period (often measured in decades or centuries; a 99-year lease is quite common) the leaseholder has the right to remain in occupation as an assured tenant paying an agreed rent to the owner. Terms of the agreement are contained in a lease, which has elements of contract and property law intertwined.
The term estate for years may occasionally be used. This refers to a leasehold estate for any specific period of time (the word "years" is misleading.) An estate for years is not automatically renewed.
Colloquially, "lease" and "leasing" are often a formalization of a longer, specific period as compared with a "rental" that created a tenancy at will, terminable or renewable at the end of a short period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leasehold_estate
Burgage plots, Birmingham
"Exploring Medieval Birmingham 1300" 6:28
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZq9cBzrIVI
"Exploring Medieval Birmingham"
https://bmagblog.org/2012/05/22/exploring-medieval-birmingham/
‘Burgage’ refers to the "long and narrow strips of land arranged along street frontages that functioned as the basic units of a town that could be built upon.
So perhaps footprints isn’t the best word to use, because I’m actually referring to plot boundaries rather than the actual buildings. But, footprints is, in another sense, an appropriate word to use as it calls to mind the idea of ‘evidence’ left behind and that’s exactly what the landscape historian and archaeologist has to work with when attempting to reconstruct medieval towns. For a city that’s never been overly keen on preserving its most recent heritage, it might surprise you to learn that Birmingham has some of these medieval ‘footprints’ left.
There are around several of these medieval burgages left in the city centre located in the Digbeth area of town, which appear to conform to their original 13th-century boundary lines. The idea of property boundaries surviving is probably slightly underwhelming for a lot of people, who’d much rather see the actual medieval buildings, but the boundary lines are largely, in fact, an older remnant of medieval towns. Moreover, their story of survival is a fascinating product of the early legal status our ancestors attributed to land. After all, it was owning land, a burgage, that made a townsperson a burgess giving them particular privileges like participating in the collective decision-making of a town. Burgess is in fact, derived from the word burgage which itself comes from the Old French word, burgeis, simply referring to an inhabitant of a town. Buildings, although more appealing, were the dispensable attributes of a property, as they came and they went, but land was preserved precisely because of its power to bestow status on a person, and not to forget its potential to make them money."
https://sarahhayes.org/tag/burgage/
"A Tour of 18th Century Birmingham.avi"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E-i36sZxOs .
Usufruct comes from civil law, under which it is a subordinate real right (ius in re aliena) of limited duration, usually for a person's lifetime. The holder of a usufruct, known as a usufructuary, has the right to use (usus) the property and enjoy its fruits (fructus). In modern terms, fructus more or less corresponds to the profit one may make, as when selling the "fruits" (in both literal and figurative senses) of the land or leasing a house.
Fruits refers to any renewable commodity on the property, including (among others) actual fruits, livestock and even rental payments derived from the property. These may be divided into civil (fructus civiles), industrial (fructus industriales), and natural fruits (fructus naturales), the latter of which, in Roman law, included slaves and livestock.
Under Roman law, usufruct was a type of personal servitude (servitutes personarum), a beneficial right in another's property. The usufructuary never had possession of this property (on the basis that if he possessed at all, he did so through the owner), but he did have an interest in the property itself for a period, either a term of years, or a lifetime. Unlike the owner, the usufructuary did not have a right of alienation (abusus), but he could sell or lease his usufructory interest. Even though a usufructuary did not have possessory title, he could sue for relief in the form of a modified possessory interdict (prohibiting order).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct .
Livery of seisin is an archaic legal conveyancing ceremony, formerly practised in feudal England and in other countries following English common law, used to convey holdings in property. The term livery is closely related to if not synonymous with delivery used in some jurisdictions in contract law or the related law of deeds. The oldest forms of common law provided that a valid conveyance of a feudal tenure in land required physical transfer by the transferor to the transferee in the presence of witnesses of a piece of the ground itself, in the literal sense of a hand-to-hand passing of an amount of soil, a twig, key to a building on that land, or other token.
Seisin (or seizin) denotes the legal possession of a feudal fiefdom or fee, that is to say an estate in land. It was used in the form of "the son and heir of X has obtained seisin of his inheritance", and thus is effectively a term concerned with conveyancing in the feudal era. The person holding such estate is said to be "seized of it", a phrase which commonly appears in inquisitions post mortem (i.e. "The jurors find that X died seized of the manor of ..."). The monarch alone "held" all the land of England by his allodial right and all his subjects were merely his tenants under various contracts of feudal tenure.
