Short Studies in the Early Common Law.
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Taningtune, and a common of wood. Other chiefly) to what we call rents-charge, exclud examples of the kind are plentiful. ing rent-service or customs payable by reason Even in that period we have evidence of tenure and coupled with reversion, which of transactions much resembling the later was termed cens.1 grants of rent-charge, except as to the inci Glanvil's reference to rents as the objects dents peculiar to the later law. Thus, in of homage clearly ranks them with what Alfred's reign or soon after, Bishop Wer- were afterward called corporeal heredita frith compromised a claim of his bishop- ments. The text should probably be thus stool to land for a perpetual annual payment punctuated and read : — of fifteen shillings clean money every year '. Fiunt autem homagia de terris et tenementis to the bishop; and the other party, one liberis tantummodo, de servitus, de redditibus Eadnoth, prays her heirs in God's name to be certis assignatis in denariis et in aliis rebus : pro ever faithful and never diminish the payment. solo vero doimnio fieri non debent homagia alicui, This probably was as near to a charge upon excepto principe." 2 the land as could then be created.1 Here, as elsewhere, the Reg. Maj. shows a Somewhat later, in Edmund's reign, A. n. better text, even where it follows the Eng 946, there is a grant of an annual rent to lish book most closely : — Glastonbery in grain, honey, etc., which is to be doubled and tripled if left in arrear; and .' Fiunt autem homagia de terns, de tenementis if unpaid for three years, the brethren are liberis tantummodo, de servitiis et redditibus assigto carry the grant to the king and bishops natis, in denariis et aliis rebus. Pro solo vero and get possession of the land Here we dominio non soiet fieri hoinagium; excepto Do have a decided advance toward the later mino Principi."8 security for such charges, in a kind of re "De redditibus certis assignatis," etc. can entry for non-payment by special interposi hardly mean anything but rents-charge or tion of the king and bishops.2 seck, while " de servitiis " (as distinct from In France we find rents enumerated as them) must be rents-service. Homage is to early as the sixth century among the posses be done for both these, but not for a mere sions of the famous Queen Brunehaut, or I seignory without them {dominio). The read Brunichild,3 and other princesses, in the same ing " domino " I take to be the work of some line with lands, etc., leaving little doubt that transcriber who did not understand its use rents were already regarded as of the same in this sense, and perhaps saw that in its nature, and as what we should now call correcter Roman sense for property in land hereditaments, or real property. homage was due for it; and was led by the In the French law the term rente* (fon"domino principi" following to suppose it ciere) seems to have been applied only (or should mean " to or for a lord." "For free tenements only" doubtless ex ' See the bishop's account of the entire transaction in cludes copyholds, etc.; the exceptions from Kemble, (.'. D. no. 327, ii. 131. Thorpe, Diplom.,-Kvi Sax., lands {/erris') follow in the latter part of the p. 166. - Kemble, C. D. no. 406, ii. 260 chapter, being dower and marriage lands, etc. 3 Cum omnibus rebus earum, cum civitatibus, agris, reIf homage was due lor rents-service, we ditibus, vel cunctis titulis et omni corpore facuitates, etc. may conclude that these as well as rentsConventus apud Andelaum, a. D. 587 in Walter, C. J Germ. ii. 6. charge were then regarded as corporeal, ob 4 As the word came to us from the French, it perhaps illustrates that class of words so wittily described by jects of seisin and of feoffment. Writs of 1 Schaffner, Gesch. d. Rechtsverfassung Frankrcichs, Sir Walter Scott in " Ivanhoe " The Norman lord would apply his own term to all profits received from his Saxon torn, iii p. 347. tenants, without reference to distinctions as to the source 2-Glanv. ix. 2, pr. from which the laborious tenant drew them. 3 Reg. Maj. ii. 65, §§ 1, 2 (ed. Houard)
