THE ENGLISH LAND SYSTEM 47 



the present day. A great authority on the subject 

 writes: "An English subject may enjoy the absolute 

 ownership of goods, but not of land. The law does 

 not recognize absolute ownership in land unless in the 

 hands of the Crown. . . . For by English law the 

 king is the supreme owner or lord paramount of every 

 parcel of land in the realm. English law then recog- 

 nizes property in, but not absolute ownership of land : 

 the most absolute property in land that a subject can 

 have is but an estate. . . , In law a landholder's estate 

 is his interest in the land of which he is a tenant, and 

 the word is specially used to denote the extent of his 

 interest. Thus a man is said to have an estate for life 

 in land, or an estate of inheritance, as an estate in fee 

 simple ; and all his estate in his land is equivalent to 

 his right therein." ^ 



The vast number of freeholders which existed in 

 olden times were freeholder-tenants, who as a rule held 

 their lands from over-lords or from the king himself, 

 subject to a variety of services which were not of a ser- 

 vile kind — knight's services, etc. These freeholders 

 were nominally protected by the common law, and from 

 a legal point of view were safe in the possession of their 

 holdings. For centuries they were a powerful class 

 and resisted the encroachments of the territorial mae- 

 nates, but as time went on, by one means or another 

 they were gradually worsted in the struggle and even- 

 tually they disappeared as a prominent factor in our 

 rural economy. Of these freeholders Stubbs writes : — 

 *' Next after the gentry in respect of that political 

 weight which depends on the ownership of land was 

 ranked the great body of freeholders, the yeomanry of 



^ " Law of Real Property," by Joshua Williams. 19th edition, 1901. 



