12 History of the English Landed Interest. 



wardship remained, in Scotland the military service remained 

 and tlie wardship had vanished.^ 



In dealing with the subject of Early English Feudalism, 

 in Part I. of this work, we drew attention to the many 

 vagaries of manorial tenures, some of which had assumed 

 such whimsical forms as the gift of a rose or the perform- 

 ance of a grotesque attitude, without which annual duties 

 the manorial rights would lapse to the superior. • This in- 

 cident, technically termed " blenchholding," was much more 

 widespread in Scotland than in England, and owed its origin 

 to a pernicious practice adopted by superiors at a time when 

 Feudalism was chiefly prominent for its luxury and dis- 

 play. In order, therefore, to obtain immediate supplies, the 

 seignorial owners granted out their lands at a nominal charge, 

 merely sufficient to prove their retention of the dominium 

 directum., in consideration of a large sum paid over at once. 

 It may be very easily believed that such valueless dues as the 

 annual tribute of a pair of spurs or a common wild flower 

 would be scarcely worth the trouble of demanding, so that the 

 king eventually lost his power over the Crown vassals, and 

 the Crown vassals theirs over the people. It would not be 

 difficult to point out numerous minor differences between the 

 systems of Feudalism as we find them in the two countries, 

 but their similarities are far more strikingly noticeable. The 

 same abuses which called for the statute of Quia Emjytore.s in 

 the reign of Edward I., induced Robert I. to transcribe this 

 enactment into the Scottish Code ; ~ and the same reluctance 

 to allow too many facilities for alienation which brought into 

 being the statute J)e Donii^, introduced,^ though much later, 

 into Scotland, a system of entails. Moreover, the same struggle 

 between the courts and the landlords, which led to the Fiction 

 of Common Recoveries in England, took place in the Northern 

 Kingdom, though with other and more salutary results, as we 

 shall now briefly demonstrate. About the period when De 

 Donis was becoming an act in the English Statute Book, there 

 was in Scotland no commerce worth mentioning to cause much 



* DalryiDple's Essays, Feudal Tenures^ 2nd ed., p. 34. 

 '' Id. Ibid., p. 85. 3 i^^ iijifi^ p_ lyg 



