3S2 History of the English Landed Interest. 



Scotch courts and the humanity of the EngHsh superiors had 

 in both countries tended towards placing the minor's person 

 in the hands of his relations rather than of his lord. The 

 statute of 12 Car. II. did not abolish either this incident or 

 that of marriage; but ever since the Revolution both have been 

 exacted by the Crown with the utmost leniency, and it has 

 always been found necessary to appoint guardians by will, or 

 (failing that) by the Court of Chancery, because infants under 

 twenty-one years could not be expected to manage efficiently 

 their own estates. Then too (the statute of 12 Car. 11. not- 

 withstanding) reliefs continued to be levied on the death of 

 tenants on lands held by a rent in fee simple. A single in- 

 stance of the aid survives now-a-days in the custom of Parlia- 

 ment to grant one for the dowry of the king's eldest daughter; 

 and the scutage payment has changed from a feudal perquisite 

 into a national land tax. It might have been thought that the 

 heriot or custom of rendering the best beast on the tenant's 

 death, which was fair enough when all his live and dead stock 

 belonged to his lord, might with justice have been abandoned, 

 now that he stocked his farm out of his own capital, but this 

 practice also survives.^ 



The purely agricultural as opposed to the military element of 

 course remained. The tenures by copy of Court Roll, in which 

 the villein's relationship with his holding had become, as it 

 were, cr3^stallised into a right, to which the archives of the 

 manorial muniment room had afforded a title protected by 

 law, had gained a modified but a fresh lease of life by the 

 statute now under examination. There were three forms of 

 this peculiar tenure. In some cases landlords, less vigilant in 

 maintaining their rights than others, had allowed hereditary 

 powers to their copyhold tenants, in other cases they were 

 determinable at the death of the occupier. To both these the 

 custom of the heriot still adhered, to the first of the two that 

 also of the wardship and fine.- The third form of copyhold 

 tenure was that of ancient demesne. It consisted of those 

 lands or manors which though now perhaps granted out to 



' Blackstone, Comm., bk. ii., cliap. vi., par. 1-10. 

 '' Id., Ibid. 



