The accession of the Stuarts to the throne of England took place under
peculiar circumstances. The nation had just passed through two very
serious struggles--one political, the other religious. The land which
had been in the possession of religious communities, instead of being
retained by the state for educational or religious purposes, had been
given to favorites. A new class of ownership had been created--the lay
impropriators of tithes. The suppression of retainers converted land
into a quasi property. The extension to land of the powers of bequest
gave the possessors greater facilities for disposing thereof. It
was relieved from the principal feudal burden, military service, but
remained essentially feudal as far as tenure was concerned. Men were no
longer furnished to the state as payment of the knight's fee; they were
cleared off the land, to make room for sheep and oxen, England being
in that respect about two hundred years in advance of Ireland, though
without the outlet of emigration. Vagrancy and its attendant evils led
to the Poor Law.
James I. and his ministers tried to grapple with the altered
circumstances, and strove to substitute and equitable Crown rent or
money payment for the existing and variable claims which were collected
by the Court of Ward and Livery. The knight's fee then consisted of
twelve plough-lands, a more modern name for "a hide of land." The class
burdened with knight's service, or payments in lieu thereof, comprised
160 temporal and 26 spiritual lords, 800 barons, 600 knights, and 3000
esquires. The knight's fee was subject to aids, which were paid to the
Crown upon the marriage of the king's son or daughter. Upon the death
of the possessor, the Crown received primer-seizen a year's rent. If the
successor was an infant, the Crown under the name of Wardship, took the
rents of the estates. If the ward was a female, a fine was levied if she
did not accept the husband chosen by the Crown. Fines on alienation
were also levied, and the estates, though sold, became escheated, and
reverted to the Crown upon the failure of issue. These various fines
kept alive the principle that the lands belonged to the Crown as
representative of the nation; but, as they varied in amount, James I.
proposed to compound with the tenants-in-fee, and to convert them into
fixed annual payments. The nobles refused, and the scheme was abandoned.
In the succeeding reign, the attempt to stretch royal power beyond its
due limits led to resistance by force, but it was no longer a mere war
of nobles; their power had been destroyed by Henry VII. The Stuarts had
to fight the people, with a paid army, and the Commons, having the
purse of the nation, opposed force to force. The contest eventuated in
a military protectorship. Many of the principal tenants-in-fee fled
the country to save their lives. Their lands were confiscated and given
away; thus the Crown rights were weakened, and Charles II. was forced to
recognize many of the titles given by Cromwell; he did not dare to
face the convulsion which must follow an expulsion of the novo homo in
posession of the estates of more ancient families; but legislation went
further--it abolished all the remaining feudal charges. The Commons
appear to have assented to this change, from a desire to lessen the
private income of the Sovereign, and thus to make him more dependent
upon Parliament, This was done by the 12th Charles II., cap. 24. It
enacts:
"That the Court of Ward and Liveries, primer seizin, etc., and all fines
for alienation, tenures by knight's service, and tenures in capite, be
done away with and turned into fee and common socage, and discharged of
homage, escuage, aids, and reliefs. All future tenures created by the
king to be in free and common socage, reserving rents to the Crown
and also fines on alienation. It enables fathers to dispose of their
children's share during their minority, and gives the custody of the
personal estate to the guardians of such child, and imposes in lieu of
the revenues raised in the Court of Ward and Liveries, duties upon beer
and ale."
The land was relieved of its legitimate charge, and a tax on beer and
ale imposed instead! the landlords were relieved at the expense of
the people. The statute which accomplished this change is described by
Blackstone as
"A greater acquisition to the civil property of this kingdom than even
Magna Charta itself, since that only pruned the luxuriances that had
grown out of military tenures, and thereby preserved them in vigor; but
the statute of King Charles extirpated the whole, and demolished both
root and branches."
The efforts of James II. to rule contrary to the wish of the nation,
led to his expulsion from the throne, and showed that, in case of future
disputes as to the succession, the army, like the Praetorian Guards of
Rome, had the election of the monarch. The Red and White Roses of the
Plantagenets reappeared under the altered names of Whig and Tory; but
it was proved that the decision of a leading soldier like the Duke of
Marlborough would decide the army, and that it would govern the nation;
fortunately the decision was a wise one, and was ratified by Parliament:
thus FORCE governed LAW, and the decision of the ARMY influenced the
SENATE. William III. succeeded, AS AN ELECTED MONARCH, under the Bill
of Rights. This remarkable document contains no provision, securing the
tenants-in-fee in their estates; and I have not met with any treatise
dealing with the legal effects of the eviction of James II. All patents
were covenants between the king and his heirs, and the patentees and
their heirs. The expulsion of the sovereign virtually destroyed the
title; and an elected king, who did not succeed as heir, was not bound
by the patents of his predecessors, nor was William asked, by the Bill
of Rights, to recognize any of the existing titles. This anomalous state
of things was met in degree by the statute of prescriptions, but even
this did not entirely cure the defect in the titles to the principal
estates in the Kingdom. The English tenants in decapitating one landlord
and expelling another, appear to have destroyed their titles, and then
endeavored to renew them by prescriptive right; but I shall not pursue
this topic further, though it may have a very definite bearing upon the
question of landholding.
It may not be uninteresting to allude rather briefly to the state of
England at the close of the seventeenth century. Geoffrey King, who
wrote in 1696, gives the first reliable statistics about the state of
the country. He estimated the number of houses at 1,300,000, and the
average at four to each house, making the population 5,318,000. He says
there was but seven acres of land for each person, but that England was
six times better peopled than the known world, and twice better than
Europe. He calculated the total income at L43,500,000, of which the
yearly rent of land was L10,000,000. The income was equal to L7, 18s.
0d. per head, and the expense L7, 11s. 4d.; the yearly increase, 6s. 8d.
per head, or L1,800,000 per annum. He estimated the annual income of 160
temporal peers at L2800 per annum, 26 spiritual peers at L1300, of 800
baronets at L800, and of 600 knights at L650.
He estimated the area at 39,000,000 acres (recent surveys make it
37,319,221). He estimated the arable land at 11,000,000 acres, and
pasture and meadow at 10,000,000, a total of 21,000,000. The area under
all kinds of crops and permanent pasture was, in 1874, 26,686,098 acres;
therefore about five and a half million acres have been reclaimed and
added to the arable land. As the particulars of his estimate may prove
interesting, I append them in a note.
[Footnote--Geoffrey King thus classifies the land of England and
Wales: