The free labouring population, therefore, in John's time, included the lower classes in the towns, and those portions of the peasantry who had either escaped being reduced to villeinage, or had been emancipated from it. This class was gradually increasing in number; but the whole amount of free labourers in England in the early part of the thirteenth century cannot have been considerable. This is proved by the absence of any complaint in the legislation, and of any in the law chronicles of those times, about vagrant beggars and paupers-subjects which we find so repeatedly noticed in the statutes and histories of the next and subsequent centuries.* The villeins on each estate were maintained by the lord of it, like his other cattle; and such freemen as became destitute found relief from the Church; the ample endowments of which continued, after the Conquest, as before it, to provide means for the maintenance of the afflicted and distressed, aided by the alms of the laity, which the clergy received and administered: the clergy being in those days the overseers and guardians of the poor.

As has been already stated, County Courts and the Hundred Courts were preserved by the Anglo-Norman kings and the subdivision of the freemen of each hundred into decennas, and the old Saxon regulations

* "It is highly probable that from the time of the Conquest till the reign of Edward III., England was little troubled with either vagrant beggars or paupers. The 'patrimony of the poor' was found in the possessions of the church, and each lord maintained his serfs or villeins, much as each proprietor of

a West India sugar plantation in more recent times has maintained his slaves. It is not till after Edward III.'s wars in France, and after the industry and wealth of towns came into existence, that we first notice traces of any considerable class of free labourers."-Pashley, p. 161.

respecting frankpledge were also in full vigour in the reign of John. The poorest free peasant was so far vested with political functions, as to have the capacity and to be under the obligation of being enrolled in a decenna; and he co-operated with his brother decennaries in preserving the peace and being bail for each other. He also attended as a member of the court of the Hundred (the court-leet as it was now termed), and participated in the numerous active duties of local self-government that were there performed. The presidents of the Hundred Courts had now, with very few exceptions, ceased to be elective. Frequently the right of presiding in the Hundred Court had become annexed to the lordship of one of the principal manors of the district. In other cases, the lordship of the Hundred (or the lordship of the leet, as it is more often called) had been granted by the Crown to some favourite baron, the office being lucrative by reason of the fines and forfeitures that accrued to its holder. But every freeman was eligible to serve the minor offices of local self-government, so far as the tithing and the hundred were concerned; and, as a "free and lawful man," he also acted on the inquests. or juries, on which (as we shall see hereafter) the king's judges frequently summoned the hundredors.

When we direct our attention to the state of the upper and middle classes at this period (exclusively of the inhabitants of the towns), we shall find the various incidents of the several Anglo-Norman feudal tenures of land so frequently requiring allusions and explanations, that it is best to direct our attention to them in the first instance.

It is to be remembered that the king was and is supreme feudal lord of all the land in the kingdom.

There were three principal tenures by which the subjects of John held their land, either immediately of him, or immediately of some other subject, and so mediately of the king. These were, 1st, tenure in chivalry, sometimes called military tenure, or tenure by knight's service; 2nd, tenure in free socage, the original of our modern freehold tenure; 3rd, tenure in villeinage, the original of our modern copyhold tenure.*

Tenure in chivalry was the most honourable; it was that by which the barons and other chief landowners held their lands of the Crown, and by which they frequently made sub-grants of land to their own military followers. But the burdens of this tenure were numerous and severe. They require particular attention, in order that we may comprehend the oppressions at the hand of the sovereign to which the barons, who gained the Great Charter, were exposed, and which caused them to become the chiefs of a great national movement on behalf of the liberty of England. Not that we would deny or disparage the renown justly due to them for the magnanimous and far-sighted spirit in which they obtained protection for the rights of others besides their own; but we must observe that a community in suffering led to their community in action with the other freemen of the realm, when those primary constitutional guarantees against arbitrary oppression were obtained, which are frequently designated in English history by the title of the Baronial reforms.

Tenure by chivalry included tenure by grand and petit serjeanty. For more full information on these points, see

Reeve's "History of the English Law," vol. i. p. 38. Stephens' "Blackstone," vol. i. p. 174.

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The king, as feudal lord of his barons, and other military tenants, had a right to exact from them military service, or a pecuniary payment in lieu thereof: and it seems to have become optional with the king to claim the money, whether the vassal wished to serve in person or not; and even to exact both money and personal service. This war-tax was called " escuage," or scutage;" and the constant wars and troubles of the times always furnished a ready pretext for demanding it. Other exactions of money-payments, under the title of aids, were continually practised. Besides these, the heir, on succeeding to his estate, was required to pay a sum of money to the lord, under the title of a "relief." If the heir was a minor, the lord took possession of the land as guardian, and used or abused it as he pleased, till the heir attained his majority. And even then the heir was obliged to pay a fine on suing out his livery, that is, on obtaining the delivery of the land from his guardian to him. The lord also had the right of nominating and tendering a wife to his male ward, or a husband to his female ward. And if the ward declined to marry the person so selected, the ward forfeited to the lord such a sum of money as the alliance was considered worth. The lord was entitled to a fine upon alienation; that is, if the tenant disposed of the land or any portion of it to any third party. If the tenant died without heirs, the land reverted to the lord. This was termed Escheat; and, as the right of devising real property did not exist in England after the Conquest till Henry the VIIIth's time, escheats must have been numerous. The lord also claimed to take back the land whenever the tenant committed any of a numerous list of crimes or acts of feudal misconduct. Such criminality or misconduct on the tenant's part was

held to work a forfeiture; a doctrine which was made peculiarly severe in England where, "by attainder of treason or felony, the tenant not only forfeited his land, but his blood was held to be corrupted or stained; whereby every inheritable quality was entirely blotted out and abolished, so that no land could thereafter be transmitted from him or through him in a course of descent.”* The king's military tenants in capite were also subject to the peculiar burden of primer seisin, which did not apply to those who held of inferior or mesne lords. Primer seisin was a kind of extra relief; and under it the king, on the death of any of his military tenants in chief, took of the heir (if of full age) a whole year's profits of the lands.

The landholders of inferior rank, who held their lands, not by military, but by socage tenure, and whom we might correctly speak of by a modern term as the yeomanry of England, were not liable to so many exactions from their feudal lord as were the military tenants. The tenant in free socage was subject to the payment of aids for knighting the lord's son, and providing a portion for the marrying his eldest daughter. Relief was due on this tenure; but its amount was fixed and limited to one year's rent of the land. Escheat and forfeiture were incident to socage tenure, and fines were due upon alienation. The lord had no right of wardship or marriage over his socage tenants.

The holders of land by villein tenure were originally villeins on the domains of feudal lords of manors, whom the indulgence of the lords permitted to remain in the occupation of their little strips of ground so long as they

*Stephens' "Blackstone," vol. i. p. 181.