^by: david-james

1066: the land stayed; the claim to dominion changed

in AD 1066, William crossed from Normandy and defeated Harold at Hastings; the fields, woods and rivers remained, while man kind fought over possession, command and the services to be rendered from the land; William rewarded his followers with extensive holdings; by 1086, the scribes compiling Domesday recorded who held land, how it was used, and how the holdings and values had changed since before the conquest; [1]

the central word is tenure: holding; a man held land of another, upon terms; in Blackstone’s account, a man granting a fee retained the superior claim, while the man receiving it took possession and use subject to the services attached to the grant; the same man could hold under one man and grant holdings to others, being described as tenant in the first relationship and lord in the second; at the head of the described order, man kind placed King, styled lord paramount; [2]

Blackstone described an arrangement made visible through bodily deeds: possession delivered before witnesses; a man kneeling, placing his hands between another man’s hands and doing homage; an oath of fealty; service in a court or on a military expedition; in that account, landholding joined use of the soil to a relationship of service and protection;

Blackstone wrote centuries after William; his account is a later explanation of English tenure, not an eyewitness record of 1066; at Book II, chapter IV, *48–51, he disputed the simple story that William seized every acre and immediately granted it all out again; his proposed connection with the 1086 Salisbury assembly is part of that historical interpretation;

the fiction was already in the foundation

Blackstone separated the physical history of holdings from the proposition used to explain them; the proposition was that King had originally owned all the land, and that every holding had come, directly or through others, from his grant;

“it became a fundamental maxim and necessary principle (though in reality a mere fiction) of our English tenures”

William Blackstone, Commentaries, Book II, chapter IV, *51; [2]

he then wrote that “the fact was indeed far otherwise”; the supposed universal royal grant supplied a common explanation for holdings whose actual histories differed; his criticism concerned the foundation assumed for English tenure, rather than a claim that nobody possessed or used the land;

this places a fiction within Blackstone’s account of the feudal arrangement itself; it cannot be dated simply as an invention made after Coke in 1612; the later use of Crown and corporate personality is a further question;

1660: the military burden removed

the clearest dated break in Blackstone’s account is AD 1660; under the settlement recorded in 12 Charles II, chapter 24, man kind removed knight-service and its associated burdens, including military wardship and marriage charges, and converted the affected holdings into free and common socage; certain other tenures and honorary services were preserved; Blackstone regarded this as a greater improvement to civil property than Magna Carta; [3]

his next chapter contains the qualification needed to understand what had gone:

“we are not to imagine that the constitution itself was utterly laid aside, and a new one introduced in its room”

Blackstone, Book II, chapter VI, *78; the subject here is the feudal arrangement of tenure; [2]

the military part had been dismantled; holding by tenure continued, predominantly in socage; in that form, the services were certain and determinate rather than the uncertain demands of knight-service; the date identifies the removal of a particular arrangement and its burdens, not the disappearance of every claim to land;

1612 onwards: the man, the office and Crown

a separate strand concerns the name under which a claim was made and continued; in his report of Sutton’s Hospital, the case of 1612 published in 1614, Edward Coke gave “the King, Bishop, Parson” as examples of corporations consisting of a sole person; he wrote King in that passage; he did not record a conveyance of all land from a man to Crown; [4]

in 1765, Blackstone described corporations as artificial persons and explained corporation sole through succession: successive occupants of an office were treated as a continuing person; he included King and parson in that explanation; the written construction allowed continuity to be attributed beyond the life of one man; it did not give an office a body of its own; [5]

in 1901, F. W. Maitland described the gradual substitution of Crown for King or Queen and questioned the habitual attribution of deeds to Crown; he also recorded several different uses of the term; his discussion supports a history of changing language and attribution, without identifying one transaction in which all dominion was surrendered; [6]

AD 2002: estates, Crown and the register

by AD 2002, the relevant vocabulary on England and Wales was that of estates, registered proprietors and Crown; the writers of the explanatory notes to the Land Registration Act 2002 described Crown as the “only absolute owner of land in England and Wales”, with everyone else holding an estate; at paragraph 128 they wrote:

“Uniquely, the Crown has dominion over all land as lord paramount.”

Land Registration Act 2002, explanatory notes, paragraph 128, accompanying section 79; these are explanatory notes, not words enacted in that section; [8]

the old expression lord paramount is still present, with dominion now attributed in that sentence to Crown; this is a recorded claim of continuity, expressed through the modern name;

in section 1 of the Law of Property Act 1925, the two estates capable of subsisting at law were specified: a fee simple absolute in possession and a term of years absolute; other interests were not all abolished, but were distinguished as legal or equitable; in section 128 of the Law of Property Act 1922, provision was made to enfranchise copyhold land; these were changes to the forms of holding and dealing with land; [7]

in section 58 of the 2002 Act it is written that registration as proprietor can result in a legal estate being deemed vested where it would not otherwise be vested; in section 79, a procedure was provided for an estate to be granted out of demesne land and registered; man kind were recording estates and giving registration a specified legal effect; the land itself did not become an entry in a register; [8]

the comparison concerns the framework enacted in 2002; its principal registration provisions, including sections 58 and 79, came into force on 13 October 2003; [9]

what changed, and what remained

comparison drawn from the sources above; the attribution of bodily deeds to man is the distinction used on this page;

sources

1. The National Archives, Domesday Book; compare Blackstone, Book II, chapter IV, *48–51;
2. William Blackstone, Commentaries, Book II (1766): chapter IV, *44–55; chapter V, *59–77; chapter VI, *78–100; chapter VII, *104–106; quotations checked against the 1893 Sharswood edition, with its spelling retained;
3. Blackstone, Book II, chapter V, *77, and chapter VI, *78–79; Tenures Abolition Act 1660, 12 Charles II, chapter 24; the modern consolidated text omits repealed passages, so Blackstone’s historical account is cited for the wider settlement;
4. Edward Coke, The Case of Sutton’s Hospital, 1612; report published 1614; 10 Co Rep 23a, at 29b; Selected Writings, volume I, PDF page 1061;
5. Blackstone, Book I (1765), chapter XVIII, *467–470;
6. F. W. Maitland, The Crown as Corporation (1901), Collected Papers, volume III, pp. 257–259; PDF pages 120–121;
7. Law of Property Act 1922, section 128, as enacted; Law of Property Act 1925, section 1, as enacted;
8. Land Registration Act 2002: explanatory notes, paragraphs 4 and 128–129; section 58 and section 79, as enacted;
9. Land Registration Act 2002 (Commencement No. 4) Order 2003, article 2;

words explained

plain-language explanations for this page, principally from Blackstone; these are paraphrases, not dictionary quotations; later statutory uses are identified where they differ;

feudal / feodal

concerning a feud, fief or fee: land held of a superior upon conditions of service; Blackstone used the spelling feodal; the broader social order included more than military tenure;

fee / fief / feud

historically, a holding granted upon services; fee later commonly described an inheritable estate; it does not mean a payment or charge in this usage; Blackstone, II, *45 and *104–106;

tenure

the manner or terms of holding land of a superior; distinguish the relationship of holding from an estate, which describes the interest held; Blackstone, II, *59 and *103;

socage / soccage

tenure by certain, determinate services, distinguished from knight-service; free and common socage became the principal form after the 1660 changes; soccage is a spelling used in the 1660 text; Blackstone, II, *78–79;

knight-service

military tenure involving stipulated service in war, with associated burdens such as wardship; it was a form of landholding, not merely the fact that a man fought on horseback; Blackstone, II, chapter V;

fealty

fidelity or faithfulness; in the tenurial ceremony, an oath undertaking fidelity to the lord; distinguish that oath from the separate ceremony of homage; Blackstone, II, *53–54;

homage

a formal acknowledgment of the relationship of holding; Blackstone described a man kneeling and placing his hands between the hands of the man acknowledged as lord, with a profession that he became his man; Blackstone, II, *53–54;

lord paramount

the lord described as above all others in the hierarchy of tenure; Blackstone used it for King; in paragraph 128 of the 2002 explanatory notes, it is attributed to Crown; Blackstone, II, *59–60;

mesne lord

an intermediate lord: a tenant in relation to a superior, and a lord in relation to a tenant below; mesne means middle or intermediate here; Blackstone, II, *59–60;

demesne

in the manorial account, land retained for the lord’s own use; in the 2002 notes, Crown demesne means land in which no fee simple subsists; the contexts must be distinguished; Blackstone, II, *90;

seisin / livery of seisin

historically, possession of a freehold in the legal sense; livery of seisin was the formal delivery of possession; mere physical occupation and legal seisin were not interchangeable; Blackstone, II, *59 and *144;

estate

the extent and duration of an interest in land; an estate is not the soil itself; a life estate and an inheritable fee are different estates, although they concern the same land; Blackstone, II, *103–104;

freehold

in modern ordinary conveyancing, usually a fee simple absolute in possession; Blackstone’s older category also included freehold estates for life, so historical use needs its context; Blackstone, II, *104 and *120; 1925 Act, section 1;

fee simple absolute in possession

an inheritable estate of potentially indefinite duration, carrying a present entitlement to possession; absolute does not mean that no mortgage, easement or other interest can affect it; compare 1925 Act, section 1;

term of years absolute

the leasehold form of legal estate identified alongside fee simple in section 1 of the 1925 Act; it concerns a term, rather than an estate inheritable without a fixed end;

copyhold / enfranchisement

copyhold was customary tenure evidenced by a copy of the manorial court roll; enfranchisement converted that tenure into freehold; some manorial incidents were separately preserved or dealt with; Blackstone, II, *95; 1922 Act, section 128;

allodial

held independently of a superior lord, without rent or service owed to such a superior; Blackstone contrasted allodium with fee, and denied that an English subject’s fee was allodial; Blackstone, II, *104–105;

dominion

mastery or control; in the cited tenurial passages, Blackstone used it for the superior or ultimate property; the 2002 writers attributed dominion to Crown; that attribution must be distinguished from a man’s observable possession and control;

corporation sole

a legal construction through which successive occupants of one office are treated as a continuing person for specified purposes; the continuity described is of the office and its capacities, not the life of one man; Blackstone, I, *469–470;

legal fiction

a proposition treated as true for a legal purpose although its literal factual basis is absent or different; Blackstone’s supposed original royal grant is the example examined here;