Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 2, Page 113

Harvard Law School Library

Bracton Online -- English

Volume 2, Page 113

Next

Go to Volume: Page:

[001] or ‘certain gloves or so many pennies;’ the tenant may then choose which of them
[002] he wishes to pay, and by paying one he is discharged. All these and many others
[003] lie in rents and renders. There is [another] kind of rent, given to be taken from
[004] some specified thing, with or without power to distrain, which is not called a
[005] service, but, as though it arose by feoffment, a free tenement, of which [more]
[006] will be said below [in the portion] on the assises.¹ Some services belonging to the
[007] chief lord consist of acts, done customarily from term to term, [they must be
[008] mentioned in the charter otherwise they cannot be claimed,] as where it is said,
[009] ‘and doing thence suit to the court of his lord and his heirs from fortnight to
[010] fortnight (or ‘from three weeks to three weeks’) in every year, from term to term’
[011] [or] ‘doing thence so many ploughings, so many mowings, so many reapings,’
[012] which all belong to lords² from tenements so given to free men. They arise from
[013] tenements and may be called feudal or praedial services, not personal [since they
[014] are owed] only by reason of lands and tenements. One may also enfeoff another by
[015] serjeanty, [which may be of many kinds, some pertaining to the lord, the feoffor,
[016] others to the king,] as where it is said, by the service of riding with his lord or lady,
[017] such persons being properly called ‘rodknights,’ or by the service of holding the
[018] pleas of their lords, or carrying letters within a certain precinct,³ or feeding greyhounds
[019] or⁴ harriers, or mewing hawks, or finding bows and arrows, or carrying them,
[020] and [many others], for the number of such serjeanties is infinite. ⁵[All such services
[021] may be called intrinsec, because they are to be expressed in charters and instruments.]
[022] Since they are not done for the king's host and the defence of the realm, but
[023] will remain to chief lords,⁶ from such serjeanties no marriage or wardship ought
[024] to accrue to the chief lord, any more than from socage.⁷ But the contrary may be
[025] seen [in the case] of an abbess of Barking, among the pleas which follow the king in
[026] the [seventeenth] year of king Henry before William of Ralegh,⁸ who recovered the
[027] wardship and marriage of the heir of one of her tenants who held his tenement in the
[028] manor of Barking by the service of riding with her from manor to manor; [a result]
[029] Stephen of Segrave did not approve. There are other kinds of serjeanties which
[030] belong not to the chief lord but to the lord

Notes

1. Infra iii, 116

2. Om: ‘feodi,’ OA, OB, OC

3. Infra 231, 254, iv, 48

4. ‘vel’

5. New paragraph

6. ‘et dominis ... remanebunt,’ from preceding line

7. Infra 231

8. B.N.B., no. 758; C.R.R., xv, nos. 188, 604