There are also other species of rents, which are reducible to these three. Rents of assize are the certain established rents of the freeholders and ancient copyholders of a manor, (c) which cannot be departed from or varied. Those of the freeholders are frequently called chief-rents, reditus capitales: and both sorts are indifferently denominated quit-rents, quieti reditus: because thereby the tenant goes quit and free of all other services. When these payments were reserved in silver or white money, they were anciently called white-rents, or blanch-farms, reditus albi; (d) in contradistinction to

rents reserved in work, grain, or baser money, [*43] which were called *reditus nigri, or black-mail.

(e) Rack-rent is only a rent of the full value of the tenement, or near it. A fee-farm rent is a rentcharge issuing out of an estate in fee; of at least onefourth of the value of the lands, at the time of its reservation: (f) for a grant of lands, reserving so considerable a rent, is indeed only letting lands to farm in feesimple instead of the usual methods for life or years.

These are the general divisions of rent; but the difference between them (in respect to the remedy for recovering them) is now totally abolished; and all persons may have the like remedy by distress for rents-seck, rents of assize, and chief-rents, as in case of rents reserved upon lease.(g)

(c) 2 Inst. 19.

(d) In Scotland this kind of small payment is called blanchholding, or reditus alba firma.

(f) Co. Litt. 143.

(e) 2 Inst. 19.

(g) Stat. 4 Geo. II, c. 28.

Rent is regularly due and payable upon the land from whence it issues, if no particular place is mentioned in the reservation: (h) but in case of the king, the payment must be either to his officers at the exchequer, or to his receiver in the country. (i) And strictly the rent is demandable and payable before the time of sunset of the day whereon it is reserved; (k) though perhaps not absolutely due till midnight. (1)

With regard to the original of rents, something will be said in the next chapter; and, as to distresses and other remedies for their recovery, the doctrine relating thereto, and the several proceedings thereon, these belong properly to the third part of our Commentaries, which will treat of civil injuries, and the means whereby they are redressed.

(h) Co. Litt. 201.

(i) 4 Rep. 73.

(k) Co. Litt. 302. 1 Anders. 253.

(1) 1 Saund. 287. Prec. Chanc. 555. Salk. 578.

CHAPTER V.*

OF THE ANCIENT ENGLISH TENURES.

In this chapter we shall take a short view of the ancient tenures of our English estates, or the manner in which lands, tenements, and hereditaments might have been holden, as the same stood in force, till the middle of the last century. In which we shall easily perceive, that all the particularities, all the seeming and real hardships, that attended those tenures, were to be accounted for upon feudal principles and no other; being fruits of, and deduced from, the feudal policy.

Almost all the real property of this kingdom is, by the policy of our laws, supposed to be granted by, dependent upon, and holden of, some superior lord, by and in consideration of certain services to be rendered to the lord by the tenant or possessor of this property. The thing holden is therefore styled a tenement, the possessors thereof, tenants, and the manner of their possession a tenure. Thus all the land in the kingdom is supposed to be holden, mediately or immediately, of the king, who is styled the lord paramount, or above all. Such tenants as held under the king immediately, when they granted out portions of their lands to inferior per

*Chapter IV, "Of the Feudal System," is omitted, for the reason that it is of no importance in modern law, and its main features are given elsewhere in the Cyclopedia of Law.-Ed.

sons, became also lords with respect to those inferior persons, as they were still tenants with respect to the king:† and, thus partaking of a middle nature, were called mesne, or middle, lords. So that if the king granted a manor to A, and he granted a portion of the land to B, now B was said to hold of A, [*60] and A of the king; or, in other words, B held his lands immediately of A, but mediately of the king. The king therefore was styled lord paramount; A was both tenant and lord, or was a mesne lord: and B was called tenant paravail, or the lowest tenant; being he who was supposed to make avail, or profit of the land. (a) In this manner are all the lands of the kingdom holden, which are in the hands of subjects: for, according to Sir Edward Coke, (b) in the law of England we have not properly allodium; which we have seen, (c) is the name by which the feudists abroad distinguish such estates of the subject as are not holden of any superior. So that at the first glance we may observe, that our lands are either plainly feuds, or partake very strongly of the feudal nature.

All tenures being thus derived, or supposed to be derived, from the king, those that held immediately under

[William the First, and other feudal sovereigns, though they made large and numerous grants of lands, always reserved a rent, or certain annual payments (commonly very trifling), which were collected by the sheriffs of the counties in which the lands lay, to show that they still retained the dominium directum in themselves. Madox Hist. Exch. c. 10; Craig. de Feud, 1. 1, c. 9.]-Note Cooley's Blackstone.

(a) 2 Inst. 296. (b) 1 Inst. 1.

(c) Page 47.

him, in right of his crown and dignity, were called his tenants in capite, or in chief; which was the most honorable species of tenure, but at the same time subjected the tenants to greater and more burthensome services than inferior tenures did. (d) This distinction ran through all the different sorts of tenure, of which I now proceed to give an account.

I. There seems to have subsisted among our ancestors four principal species of lay tenures, to which all others may be reduced: the grand criteria of which were the natures of the several services or renders, that were due to the lords from their tenants. The services, in respect of their quality, were either free or base services; in respect of their quantity and the time of exacting them, were either certain or uncertain. Free services were such as were not unbecoming the character [*61] of a soldier or a freeman to perform; *as to serve under his lord in the wars, to pay a sum of money, and the like. Base services were such as were fit only for peasants or persons of a servile rank; as to plough the lord's land, to make his hedges, to carry out his dung, or other mean employments. The certain services, whether free or base, were such as were stinted in quantity, and could not be exceeded on any pretense; as, to pay a stated annual rent, or to plough such a field for three days.

(d) In the Germanic constitution, the electors, the bishops, the secular princes, the imperial cities, &c., which hold directly from the emperor, are called the immediate states of the empire; all other landholders being denominated mediate ones. Mod. Un. Hist. xliii, 61.