Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 2, Page 116

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Volume 2, Page 116

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[001] and military services, and also homage,¹ and thus need not be set forth in charters,
[002] for if homage has been done and it is royal service it follows therefrom that relief
[003] or wardship and marriage will belong to the chief lord, whether the military
[004] service or the serjeanty connected with the host² is great or small, if only to the
[005] extent of a single halfpenny.³ There are some customs which are called neither
[006] services nor the concomitants of services, as reasonable aids for making [the lord's]
[007] eldest son a knight or marrying his eldest daughter, aids that are furnished, of
[008] favour not of right, because of the need and indigence of the chief lord. For an aid
[009] is never exacted unless necessity requires it, nor is anyone bound to furnish it
[010] except because of the need of his chief lord and because he is his free man. These
[011] aids are not praedial but personal, for they look to persons not fees,⁴ as may be
[012] drawn from the command of the lord king by his writ, which is in this form: that
[013] the sheriff rightfully and without delay cause such a one to have of his knights
[014] and free tenants in his bailiwick a reasonable aid for making his eldest son a knight
[015] (or for marrying his eldest daughter) as will be explained below.⁵ And since these
[016] aids depend on the favour of tenants and not the will of lords, and are not feudal
[017] but personal, regard ought to be had to the person of each, of the lord and the
[018] tenant, that the lord's need, whether great or small, be relieved and the tenant
[019] suffer no hardship, the aid being to the advantage of the donee and the honour of
[020] the donor.⁶ There are also, among others, some personal payments not called
[021] services, as sheriff's aids, which the feoffor is not bound to warrant. Also communal
[022] fines set upon a whole county, as in the eyre of the justices and elsewhere, for
[023] misdeeds, as where the county falls into mercy for a trespass; these are not
[024] counted among services. There are also certain communal payments not termed
[025] services, nor do they customarily arise except when the need for them occurs, as
[026] hidages, cornages, carucages, and many others, introduced of necessity and by the
[027] common consent of the whole realm, which do not belong to the lord of a fee and of
[028] which no one is bound to acquit his tenant, unless in his charter he specially binds
[029] himself to do so. [Hence though the feoffor and chief lord says, ‘I and my heirs

Notes

1. ‘homagium’

2. Infra 254

3. Infra 117, 231

4. Supra 79

5. Not dealt with in treatise

6. Infra 249