for example, the customary tenants may demise without licence for nine, twelve, or twenty-one years, according to the usage in each case, or for several successive periods of three, seven, or nine years, or the like; elsewhere the tenants may demise without licence for a life and twelve years after, or for long terms, or even for a life and forty years after (c).

If a copyholder leases for more than one year without licence, or without a special custom authorising the lease, he renders his estate liable to forfeiture (d). A lease for one year, and so on from year to year, or a lease which amounts in law to a lease for two years at least, if not warranted by the custom, will be a cause of forfeiture (e); but a lease for a year with a covenant for renewal at the will of the lessor will not operate as a forfeiture (ƒ). A custom for copyholders of inheritance to make leases for years without licence, but on condition of the term ceasing on the lessor's death, has been held a good custom (g), but all such special customs must be clearly proved (h). Notwithstanding the forfeiture created by a lease for years granted without the licence of the lord, or without a custom to support it, the lease will yet be good as between the parties to it, and the lessee will have a good title as against everyone but the lord (i); and as against the lord himself the lease is only a ground of forfeiture which he may waive (k).

By the lord's licence the copyholder may lease for any Leases under number of years, and the lessee will have a common-law licence. estate and not a customary interest in the land. The lessee may assign or underlet without any fresh licence, the lord's

(e) Kitch. Jurisd. 201; Com. Dig. Copyh. (K. 3).

(d) Jackman v. Hoddesden, Cro.

Eliz. 351.

(e) Luttrel v. Weston, Cro. Jac. 308.

(f) Lady Montague's Case, Cro. Jac. 301.

(g) Turner v. Hodges, Hutt. 101. (h) See Kensy v. Richardson, Cro. Eliz. 728.

(i) Doe d. Tresidder v. Tresidder, 1 Q. B. 417.

(k) Doe d. Robinson v. Bousfield, 6 Q. B. 492.

Power of lord to grant licence.

interest in the land being discharged, and the lord being considered as having placed himself in a position of a landlord to the lessee (7). Where a licence to demise has been. granted the lease must not exceed the terms of the licence or it will be void (m); but a demise for a less term or interest than is authorised by the licence will be good (n); and a subsequent forfeiture by the copyhold tenant of his estate will not affect the lessee's interest (o). A copyholder for life cannot lease for any period exceeding his own life, unless by having a right of renewal or a power of nominating his successor he has an estate equivalent to a copyhold of inheritance (p). The lord cannot grant a licence on condition, for by the licence the lord gives nothing, but only dispenses with the forfeiture, all the estate or interest under the lease passing from the copyholder (q).

The lord's licence will in general last only during the continuance of his own estate, so that if the lord is a tenant for life the licence given by him will come to an end at his death (r); unless the licence has been given under a power of dealing with the fee, or under the provisions of the Settled Land Act, 1882, which permit a tenant for life of a settled manor to grant to a tenant of copyhold or customary land a licence to make a lease of the land, for ninety-nine years in the case of a building lease, for sixty years in the case of a mining lease, or for twenty-one years in the case of any other lease; or with the sanction of a judge of the Chancery Division of the High Court for a longer period than ninetynine years, or in perpetuity in the case of a building lease, on proof either that it is the custom to lease for such longer period or in perpetuity, or that it is difficult to grant building leases except for such longer period, or except in

(7) Co. Copyh. s. 51; Johnson v. Smart, 1 Ro. Abr. 508, pl. 14; Turner v. Hodges, Hutt. 101.

(m) Jackson v. Neal, Cro. Eliz. 395. (n) Worledge v. Benbury, Cro. Jac. 436.

(0) Clarke v. Arden, 16 C. B. 227. (p) Haddon v. Arrowsmith, Cro. Eliz. 461, 462.

(q) Ibid. For a form of licence, see Appendix, post.

(r) Petty v. Evans, 2 Brownl. 40.

perpetuity (s). The licence may fix the annual value whereon fines, fees, or other customary payments are to be assessed, or may fix the amount of those fines, fees, or payments, but it must be entered on the court rolls of the manor. A certificate in writing by the steward that the licence has been entered on the rolls is to be sufficient

evidence of the entry (t).

interests other

The chattel interests, other than terms of years, which Chattel may subsist in copyholds, are not of such importance as to than terms of require a detailed description. A copyhold may be held years. by a tenant at will, as where a mortgagor is left in possession by a mortgagee who has been admitted upon a conditional surrender, or by a tenant at sufferance, where one who came in by right stays in by wrong, after his estate in the tenement has come to an end; and copyholds. having been rendered extendible for judgment debts by the Act 1 & 2 Vict. c. 110, may be delivered by the sheriff upon a writ of execution to a creditor holding by elegit, a kind of tenancy which is regarded in law as a chattel interest of uncertain duration.

II.-COPYHOLDS FOR LIVES.

In many parts of England, and especially in manors Nature of belonging to ecclesiastical corporations in the Western estates. Counties, the copyholds are granted for lives and for no greater estate. In some parts it is not unusual to find copyholds of inheritance and copyholds for lives in the same manor. The copyholds for lives are not usually expressed to be held at the will of the lord, but are customary freeholds held according to the custom of the manor. It has been sometimes suggested, that they are probably copyholds in the strict sense of the term, the reference to the lord's will being omitted, because these ecclesiastical manors were usually leased to a loid-farmer, and so there

(*) 45 & 46 Vict. c. 38, s. 14 (1), and see ss. 6-10, and 53 & 54 Vict. c. 69, ss. 7-9.

(f) 45 & 46 Vict. c. 38, s. 14, subs. 2, 3.

Description of tenure.

might have been some ambiguity in a statement that the copyholds were held at the will of the lord. But there seems to be not much need of this hypothesis, and in some of these manors copyholders at the will of the lord and customary freeholders for lives are found existing together. The tenure usual in the West of England has been thus described by a competent authority (u). "The land is granted to two or three persons for their lives successively, the widow of the person dying in possession being entitled to the whole tenement for her widowhood. The lives are the beneficial owners unless the contrary is expressed and, uses being unknown, there can be no beneficial ownership apart from the lives, except by virtue of a trust which may or may not appear upon the court rolls. The copyholder has a power of destroying the widow's freebench by surrender, ending his own estate. In some manors the grant is made indiscriminately, either to a man for his own life, or for the lives of others."

The tenure of the copyholds in the ecclesiastical manors in the See of Worcester has been thus described by persons acquainted with the local tenures.

"The tenure, with few exceptions, is for lives by grants by copy of court-roll-under the See of Worcester, by grant for one life in possession, and by grant for three lives in reversion; and under the Dean and Chapter by grant for two lives in possession, and by grant for two in reversion; in the former case the possession-life is admitted, and the lands are stated to be in his actual possession, although such very seldom happens, and in the latter case the eldest possession-life is in like manner admitted. A trust is declared for the beneficial owner, his executors administrators and assigns, so that on intestacy the lands descend to the personal and not to the real representatives of the deceased. If the beneficial owner is the tenant in possession on the rolls, his widow is entitled to freebench

(u) R. P. Comrs. 1 Rep, App. 417.

during her widowhood. On the death of the possessionlife a heriot becomes payable to the lord, and on the death of the second possession-life the value of half a heriot is payable to the Dean and Chapter. From time immemorial renewals have taken place on the death of any of the lives, on payment of certain fines; in the manors belonging to the See on payment of three-fourths of a year's improved rent, and in the manors belonging to the Dean and Chapter on payment of half a year's improved rent. The lords, upon the deaths of all the lives in possession and reversion, claim the lands as their own, and if all the reversionary lives are dead, there being what is technically called an open reversion, the lords claim the right of filling up the reversion with lives of their own nomination."

In the case of Watkins v. Lea (x), where substantially the same description is given, the lands are said to be granted for two lives in possession and two in reversion upon trust for the persons beneficially entitled, and to be deviseable by such persons, and not to be descendible in case of their intestacy to their heirs, but to be distributable as personal estate: "and on the death of any life and surrender of the other lives then in being, and on payment of the customary fines, the lords have made new grants by copy of court roll for two lives in succession and two in reversion for the benefit of the persons beneficially interested." Under the special circumstances of that case, the copyholds in question passed under a residuary bequest of personalty, and not under a general devise of copyholds contained in the same will.

the tenure.

In other places the copyholds are granted for lives suc- Varieties of cessively as to three persons for the term of their lives, and the life of the longest liver of them, to hold successively as they are named, and not otherwise; the person first named in the grant enjoying the tenement to him alone during his life, and so the second and third, and the

(x) 6 Ves. jun. 633.