s 



although nominally the holding was at the will of the lord, and 

 the lord exacted certain services which were afterwards commuted 

 into money payments, and he retained all timber and mines upon 

 the property; and this property is now what is known as copy- 

 hold. 



In form, the conveyance of a copyhold estate is to this day a 

 surrender to the lord of the manor, who admits the nominee or 

 the tenant as the new tenant, his right of veto having ceased to 

 exist, although for a long time it was in active operation ; and by 

 custom copyhold estates follow freehold in their method of 

 descent. 



These two classes of property — freehold and copyhold — em- 

 bracing as they do almost the whole of the land in England, it 

 becomes of interest to trace how it is that the land in this 

 immediate neighbourhood should form an exception to the general 

 rule. The \vriters on the subject of the tenures of land treat 

 customaryholds with scant notice : none of them seem to have 

 thought it worth while to ascertain the real state of the case ; and, 

 as a rule, customaryholds and copyholds are treated as one and 

 the same thing ; and there is no doubt that they do possess certain 

 points of resemblance, but they also possess essential points of 

 difference. The method of conveying a customaryhold estate is 

 by an ordinary deed of conveyance, and the purchaser is afterwards 

 admitted tenant upon the Court Roll ; but, whereas the copyholder 

 is said to hold at the will of the lord, there is no such restriction 

 in the case of a customaryhold, and the admittances of customary- 

 holders seem to have been merely for purposes of registration, the 

 admittance being in no way necessary to complete a conveyance. 

 Again, the timber upon customary estates belongs to the customary- 

 holder, and not to the lord of the manor, in which respect the 

 customaryholder is superior to the copyholder ; and although the 

 mines and minerals beneath the customaryhold estates belong to 

 the lord of the manor, the reason of this will be shown hereafter 

 as not derogating in any respect from the nobility of the tenure. 



The explanation of the existence of this peculiar tenure in this 

 portion of the country is an easy one, and one which will, I trust, 



