54 The Story of The Bronx 



was introduced into England later and was eradicated from 

 there earlier than on the continent of Europe, lands were 

 granted to knights as payment for military services and on 

 condition that such military service should be forthcoming 

 upon the demand of the sovereign or over-lord from whom such 

 lands were held. From a variety of sources, including the 

 multiplication of such fiefs, their subdivision, their inheritance 

 by females incapable of military service, and what not, there 

 was enacted a law in 1290, during the reign of Edward I., 

 which put an end to the formation of new military manors 

 forever. In the old Saxon kingdom of Kent, which became 

 the county of Kent under the Normans, there was the manor 

 of East Greenwich, which was held of the crown in free and 

 common socage. By "free and common socage" is meant 

 fealty to the king, or over-lord, and the payment at fixed 

 intervals or upon fixed occasions of a certain service, as op- 

 posed to uncertain, or military, service. This certain service 

 might take the form of a yearly payment of money, of some 

 article, of a fixed quantity of grain or other produce, of pelts, 

 of ploughing so many acres or for so many days, and so on. 

 At the time of the coronation of an English king, we find many 

 claims advanced by English gentlemen — one furnishes so 

 many napkins for the royal table; another holds the basin 

 for the king to wash his hands ; another, the towel to dry them ; 

 another provides a pigeon pie or venison pasty for the banquet ; 

 another holds the king's stirrup when he mounts his horse to 

 ride to Westminster to be crowned; another, when he returns. 

 All of these, and many more, are really the services to be 

 rendered for the possession of the manors in England ; and the 

 question might legally arise whether the manor-lords have not 

 forfeited their rights to their manors by a failure to perform 

 such service, unless the king, by his failure to accept such 



