Feudalism. 145 



In tlie incident of the Escheat we can also discern a popular 

 claim on tlie soil which must have been a lingering survival 

 of the old Mark. The escheat wa« both a royal and a seig- 

 norial prerogative. In its former aspect it derived its origin 

 from the old Saxon practice, by which not only the lands but 

 whatever else the offender possessed were forfeited to the 

 king. But even before the days of kings, when the com- 

 munity was the sovereign power, there must have been a 

 similar practice. Possibly in this primitive form it may have 

 been implicated with some early system of the frank-pledge. 

 Be this as it may, this earliest shape of forfeiture is indis- 

 tinctly recognisable in the later feudal incident of escheat. 

 As the territorial rights of the vassal originally belonged to 

 the lord, they very properly reverted to him when escheat or 

 forfeiture occurred. But not so the late vassal's works of 

 industry on the escheated lands. They became the property 

 of the public, and that is no doubt the principle held in view 

 when this incident was first introduced into the feudal sj^stem. 

 Subsequently we have, by a legal quibble, the king, as chief 

 public magistrate, carrying all off that he can and destroying 

 the rest. Then, in order to get out of so profitless a custom, 

 both parties agree that a year's rent shall be substituted for 

 the king's right of waste. But these later steps were the 

 consequences of the different aspect which landownership had 

 now begun to assume. The advance in national agriculture 

 helped forward the change. As wars ceased, men turned to 

 the improvement of their seignorial property ; and when once 

 his capital began to be sunk in the soil, the landlord tightened 

 his grasp on real property. Much of this was the work of 

 centuries ; and the statute finally abolishing military tenures 

 was not passed until the Restoration era, from which date 

 feudal incidents affected only the forms whereby real propert}^ 

 is conveyed, or were permitted to exist on account of their 

 picturesque surroundings. There was an old officer in the 

 Exchequer as late as Charles II. who remembered the payment 

 of herring pies to the king for the manor of Carleton in Nor- 

 folk. The annual delivery of a mew'd sparhawk, a pair of 

 spurs, gloves, and such-like trifles into the Exchequer were 

 common incidents of tenure. L 



