3G8 AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF 



The fine for Now therefore, to proceed to the reason and equity of 



alienation is exacting these fines for such alienations, it standeth thus : 

 when the king, whom our law understandeth to have been 

 at the first both the supreme lord of all the persons, and 

 sole owner of all the lands within his dominions, did give 

 lands to any subject to hold them of himself, as of his 

 crown and royal diadem, he vouchsafed that favour upon 

 a chosen and selected man, not minding that any other 

 should, without his privity and good liking, be made owner 

 of the same ; and therefore his gift has this secret inten 

 tion inclosed within it, that if his tenant and patentee shall 

 dispose of the same without his kingly assent first ob 

 tained, the lands shall revert to the king, or to his suc 

 cessors, that first gave them. And that also was the very 

 cause, as I take it, why they were anciently seized into the 

 king s hands, as forfeited by such alienation, until the 

 making of the said statute, 1 E. III. which did qualify that 

 rigour of the former law. 



Neither ought this to seem strange in the case of the 

 king, when every common subject, being lord of lands 

 which another holdeth of him, ought not only to have no 

 tice given unto him upon every alienation of his tenant, 

 but shall, by the like implied intention, re-have the lands 

 of his tenants dying without heirs, though they were given 

 out never so many years agone, and have passed through 

 the hands of howsoever many and strange possessors. 



Not without good warrant, therefore, said Mr. Fitzher- 

 bert, in his Nat. Brev. fol. 147, that the justices ought not 

 wittingly to suffer any fine to be levied of lands holden in 

 chief, without the king s license. And as this reason is 

 good and forcible, so is the equity and moderation of the 

 fine itself most open and apparent ; for how easy a thing- 

 is it to redeem a forfeiture of the whole lands for ever with 

 the profits of one year, by the purchase of a pardon ? Or 

 otherwise, how tolerable is it to prevent the charge of that 

 pardon, with the only cost of a third part thereof, timely 

 and beforehand bestowed upon a license ? 



The antiquity Touching the king s fines accustomably paid for the pur- 

 and moderation chasing of writs original, I find no certain beginning of 

 l. them, and do therefore think that they also grew up with 

 the chancery, which is the shop wherein they be forged ; 

 or, if you will, with the first ordinary jurisdiction and deli 

 very of justice itself. 



For when as the king had erected his courts of ordinary 

 resort, for the help of his subjects in suit one against ano- 



