Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 2, Page 83

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Volume 2, Page 83

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[001] said that anyone may waive his fee, that must be taken subject to a distinction, for¹
[002] if one enfeoffs another of a hundred pounds worth of land for the service of a penny
[003] the land so given will be the fee of the donor, because he enfeoffs,² and similarly the
[004] fee of the feoffee because he is enfeoffed thereof to hold in fee to himself and his
[005] heirs.³ Hence with respect to his feoffor⁴ a feoffee may well waive his fee, since that
[006] is to his feoffor's advantage and his own disadvantage, but a feoffor cannot do so
[007] [with respect to his feoffee], for if that were true, that he could waive his fee, he
[008] would never warrant his feoffee for a trifling service.]⁵ ⁶and in place of the heir will
[009] defend him whom he in whose place he stands would be bound to defend. ⁷Because
[010] as many are heirs [descending] from heir to heir, near and remote, so many may be
[011] tenants by many successive feoffments, from tenant to tenant, and many chief lords
[012] will be the superior lords of the last feoffee, some nearer and some more remote,
[013] ascending to the first feoffor, and so there will be many tenants of the chief lord, the
[014] first feoffor, descending by steps to the last.⁸ Land also reverts to the donor by
[015] restitution, as where a tenant has returned and restored his tenement to his lord, or,
[016] as he may well do, has waived it in perpetuity. Homage is thereby dissolved and
[017] extinguished and such tenement may remain with the donor despite it. Land given
[018] reverts to the donor not [only] because of the failure of heirs or the commission of
[019] felony, but as next heir to his feoffee, as where, before his death, a father enfeoffs his
[020] middle son, or an older brother a younger, and such feoffee dies without an heir of
[021] his body; the land given reverts to the feoffor, the older brother, both by way of
[022] escheat (because of the failure of the heirs of the body of his younger brother) and as
[023] older brother and heir.⁹ But since homage neither disappears nor is extinguished
[024] when there are other heirs, kinsmen or brothers, nor may the older, because of the
[025] homage, be both heir and lord,¹⁰ since homage thrusts away the demesne and retains
[026] the service, the land given may not remain with the donor [the older brother] if there
[027] is a next heir to him [the younger] who claims.¹¹ But if there is no heir at all, or no
[028] claimant, the land will remain with such feoffor.¹² If one enfeoffs another, and he a
[029] second, and the second a third, and so ad infinitum, and the

Notes

1. ‘quia’

2. Infra iii, 275

3. Infra 143, iii, 274

4. ‘feoffatorem’

5. Infra 234, 237, iv, 196

6. Om: ‘Cum igitur ... velit nolit,’ a connective

7-8. Belongs supra 82 at n. 18; om: ‘Et sic ... remoti,’ meaningless

9. Infra 110, 192

10. Glanvill, vii, 1; infra iii, 295, 308, 314, iv, 31; Bailey in Cambridge L. Jour., ix, 96-8

11. Infra 192-3

12. Infra 193; iii, 314