ably be gotten." We thus enter the sphere of commerce, of rents fixed by supply and demand.

Such tenures as these may be found in every zone of the territorial system. The tenant may be holding of the king in chief; the king has, as we should say, granted perpetual leases at substantial rents of some of his manors, the lessees being sometimes lay barons, sometimes religious houses. Again, from the Conquest onward, to say nothing of an earlier time, very great men have not thought it beneath them to hold church lands at easy rents. It is an accusation common in monastic annals that the abbots of the Norman time dissipated the lands of their houses by improvident grants to their foreign kinsmen or by taking fines instead of reserving adequate rents. In such cases these tenants in socage may have other tenants in socage below them, who will pay them heavier rents. Ultimately we come to the actual occupant of the soil, whose rent will in many cases represent the best offer that his landlord could obtain for the land. Occasionally he may be paying more for the land than can be got from the villeins of the same village.

(c) Sometimes we find in charters of feoffment that the feoffee, besides paying rent, is to do or get done a certain amount of agricultural labor on his lord's land; so much ploughing, so much reaping. The feoffee may be a man of mark, an abbot, a baron, who will have many tenants under him and will never put his hand to the plough. These cases are of importance because they seem to be the channel by which the term socage gradually spreads itself.

(d) Finally, within a manor there often are tenants bound to pay divers dues in money and in kind and bound to do or get done a fixed quantity of agricultural service for their lords. Their tenure is often regarded as very old; often they have no charters which express its terms. Hereafter we shall see that it is not always easy to mark the exact line which separates them from the tenants in villeinage among whom they live and along with whom they labor for the lord's profit. Some of them are known as free

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sokemen (sokemanni, sochemanni); but this name is not very common except on the ancient demesne" of the Crown.

Now, to all appearance the term socage, a term not found in Normandy, has been extending itself upward; a name appropriate to a class of cultivating peasants has begun to include the baron or prelate who holds land at a rent, but is not burdened with military service. Of such a man it would seem natural to say that he holds at a rent (tenet ad censum), and for a century and more after the Norman Conquest it is rare to call his tenure socage. He is sometimes said to have feodum censuale; far more commonly he is said to hold "in fee farm." This term has difficulties of its own, for it appears in many different guises; a feoffee is to hold in feofirma, in feufirmam, in fedfirmam, in feudo firmam, in feudo firma, ad firmam feodalem, but most commonly, in fcodi firma. The old English language had both of the words of which this term is compounded, both feoh (property) and feorm (rent); but so had the language of France, and in Norman documents the term may be found in various shapes, firmam fedium, feudifirmam. But, whatever may be the precise history of the phrase, to hold in fee farm means to hold heritably, perpetually, at a rent; the fee, the inheritance, is let to farm. This term long struggles to maintain its place by the side of socage; the victory of the latter is not perfect even in Bracton's day; the complete merger of fee farm in socage is perhaps due to a statute of Edward I., though the way toward this end had long been prepared.

As to the word socage, a discussion of it would open a series of difficult problems about the administration of justice in the days before the Conquest. . . . Bracton believed erroneously no doubt, but erroneous etymology is at force in the history of the law-that socage had to do with soc, the French word for a ploughshare; tenants in socage therefore are essentially agriculturists, and the duty of ploughing the lord's demesne is the central feature of soc

age. In the second place, if we turn to the true derivation, we come to much the same result; socage is at starting the tenure of those sokemen of whom we read in Domesday book; socage is an abstract term which describes their condition. Gradually it has been extended and therefore attenuated until it is capable of expressing none but negative characteristics-socage is a tenure which is not spiritual, not military, not serviential. No similar extension has been given to the word sokeman; in the thirteenth century many persons hold in socage who would be insulted were they called sokemen; for the sokemen are a humble, though it may be a well-to-do class.

That they have been a numerous class we may gather as from other evidence so from this, that socage becomes the one great standing contrast to military tenure, and as the oppressive incidents of military tenure are developed, every man who would free his holding from the burdens of wardship and marriage is anxious to prove that he holds in socage. To gain this end he is full willing to sink somewhat of dignity; he will gladly hold by the peasant's tenure when the most distinctive marks of that tenure are immunities—no scutage, no wardship, no marriage.

CHAPTER II.

INCIDENTS OF FEUDAL TENURE.

STAT. I HEN. I., cc. 3, 4 (1100). If any of my barons or other men wishes to give his daughter, or sister, or niece, or cousin in marriage, let him speak with me; but I will neither take anything of his for the license, nor will I forbid him to give her away, unless it be to an enemy of mine. And if on the death of one of my barons or other men he leaves a daughter as heir, I will give her with her land by the counsel of my barons. If he leaves a widow, who is without children, she shall have her dower and marriage portion, and I will not give her in marriage against her will. If she has children, she shall have her dower and marriage portion while she remains chaste, and I will not give her unless with her consent. And the wife or some other relative who has the best claim shall be guardian of the land and of the children. And I bid my barons keep within the same bounds as regards the sons, daughters and wives of their men.

MAGNA CARTA (1215), c. 2. If any of our earls or barons, or any other which hold of us in chief by knight's service, die, and at the time of his death his heir be of full age, and oweth to us relief, he shall have his inheritance by the old relief; that is to say, the heir or heirs of an earl, for a whole earldom, by one hundred pounds; the heir or heirs of a baron, for a whole barony, by one hundred marks; the heir or heirs of a knight for one whole knight's fee, one hundred shillings at the most; and he that hath less shall give less, according to the old custom of the fees.

c. 3. But if the heir of any such be within age, his lord

shall not have the ward of him, nor of his land, before that he hath taken of him homage; and after that such an heir hath been in ward, when he is come to full age, that is to say, to the age of one and twenty years, he' shall have his inheritance without relief and without 'fine, so that, if such an heir, being within age, be made knight, yet, nevertheless, his land shall remain in the keeping of his lord unto the term aforesaid.

c. 6. Heirs shall be married without disparagement.

c. 15. We will not give leave to any one, for the future, to take an aid of his own freemen, except for redeeming his own body, and for making his eldest son a knight, and for marrying once his eldest daughter; and not that unless it be a reasonable aid.

c. 39 (1217). No freeman from henceforth shall give or sell any more of his land but so that of the residue of the lands the lord of the fee may have the service due to him which belongeth to the fee.

MAGNA CARTA (1225), c. 7, § 6. No widow shall be distrained to marry herself; nevertheless she shall find surety that she shall not marry without our license and assent (if she hold of us), nor without the assent of the lord, if she hold of another.

STAT. MERTON (20 HEN. III. 1235), c. 7. If an heir, of what age soever he be, will not marry at the request of his lord, he shall not be compelled thereunto; but when he cometh to full age he shall give to his lord and pay him as much as any would have given him for the marriage, before the receipt of his land, and that whether he will marry himself, or not; for the marriage of him that is within age of mere right pertaineth to the lord of the fee.

STAT. WESTM. I. (3 EDW. I. 1275), c. 36. Forasmuch. as before this time reasonable aid to make one's son knight, or marry his daughter was never put in certain, nor how