Lands as much sometimes as amounted to a third part of a Shire or County were in the Nobilities or great mens possessions some of whom held of the King a 100 or more Mannors and had as many Knights Fees holden of them besides some Castles Forrests Parks and Chases or that the two Escheators which were many times all that were in England the one on this side the other beyond Trent did not nor could not so carefully look to the death of the Kings Tenants which the Statute of 14 E. 3. ca. 8. complaineth of or that the smaller sort of Lands in Capite or mean mens estates were not so much looked after And yet the old Records of the Kingdome do speak a great deal of care and looking after every part of the Kings Revenew the not mentioning in deeds or conveyances of whom or how the Land was holden the more frequent use of Feoffements with Livery seisin in former times which being not Inrolled hindred or obstructed the vigilance of the Escheators and Feodaries their sleepinesse in permitting where any one Mannor or parcel was holden in Capite many other Mannors or Lands of the same Tenure to be found in the same Inquisition by an Ignoramus of the Tenure services the craft industry of many if not most men to evade and elude as much as they can the Law or any Acts of Parliament though when they are sometimes catched they dearly pay for it Or by some other cause or reason not yet appearing many of the said Knights Fees are lost and never to be discovered the Offices post mortem now extant in the Tower of London being in the last year of the reign of King H. 3. in the beginning of whose reign they first began to be regularly found and recorded but 187. in an 35. E. 1 153. in an 20 E. 2 52. of the succeeding Kings untill the end of E. 4. when such Tenures were most valued and respected are in every year but few in number sometimes less than 200 and many times not above 300 in the most plentiful years of those times And of the Knights Fees Lands holden in Capite and by Knight service which are now to be discovered in the greatest diligence of Escheators their better looking unto them in this last Century of years where there hath been an Escheator for the most part in every County to look to the Tenures and Wardships there will not upon exact search thereof appear to be in an 21 Jac. Regis any more than 71.22 Jac. 73 in 2 Car. Regis primi 112 in 3 Car. Regis primi 85. Custodies wardships granted under the great Seal of England which in Wardships of any Bulk or concernment doe most commonly pass that way leaving those of ordinary and lesser value to passe only under the Seal of the Court of Wards and Liveryes in an 10 Car. primi not above 450 offices post mortem some of which did only entitle the King to a Livery are to be found filed returned in an 11 Car. Regis not above 580 which may give us some estimate of the small number which now remains of that huge number which former ages writers talked of that after that rate if there be 10000 Knights Fees holden in Capite there is scarce a twentieth part falls one year with another to make any profit or advantage to the King by Wardships Marriage Reliefs primer seisin c. Nor are there unless by some unluckiness or accidents commonly above one in every three or four discents in a Family holding in Capite which do die and leave their Heirs in minority then also it is either more of less chargeable to the Family as the Males shall be nearer unto or more remote from their full age of 21 or the Females to their age of 16 some of the supposed Inconveniences being prevented by an earlier marriage of the Inheritrixes or the Kings giving the honour of Knighthood to some of the Males in their minoritie which dispenseth with the value of their marriages And yet those Tenures Wardships and incidents thereunto though so antient legal and innocent in their use and institution were not without the watchful eye and â—are of Parliaments to prevent or pluck up any Grievances which like weeds in the best of Gardens or per accidens might annoy or blemish those fair flowers of the Crown Imperial as that of 9 H. 3 that the Tenant by Knight Service being at his full age when his Ancestor dyeth shall have his inheritance by the old relief according to the old custom of the Fees the Statute of Merton in anno 9 H. 3 ca 2. and 3 E. 1 ca 2â— the Kings Tenant being at full age shall pay according to the old custom that is to say five pounds for a Knights Fee or lesse according to proportion ca 4 and 5. The Keeper of the Lands of the Heir within age shall not take of the Lands of the Heir but reasonable issues customs and services without distruction and wast of his men and goods shall keep up the Houses Parks Warrens Ponds Mills and other things pertaining to the Lands with the issues of the Lands and deliver the Lands to the Heir when he comeâ—h of full age stored with Plowes and all other things at least as he recieved them ca 7. A Widdow shall have her Marriage inheritance and tarry in the chief house of her Husband forty days after her Husbands death with reasonable Estovers within which time her Dower shall be assigned if it were not assigned before The Wards shall not be married to Villains or other as Burgesses where they be disparaged or within the age of fourteen years or such age as they cannot consent to mariage and if they do and their Friends complain thereof the Lord shall loose the Wardship and all the profits that thereof shall be taken and they shall be converted to the use of the Heirs being within age after the disposition and provision of their Friends for the shame done unto them a Writ of Mortd'auncester shall be allowed to the Heir with dammages against the Lord that keepeth his Lands after he is of full age Heirs within age shall not loose their Inheritance by the neglect or wilfulnesse of their Guardians 52 H. 3. cap 7 and 16. The Lord shall not after the age of fourteen years keep a Female unmarried more than two years after and if he do not by that time marry her she shall have an Action to recover her Inheritance without giving any thing for her Wardship or Inheritance 3 E. 1 ca. 22. A Writ of Novel disseisin shall be awarded against any Escheator that by colour of his Office shall disseise any of his freehold with double dammages and to be grievously amerced Westmr. 1.3 E. 1 cap. 24 In aid to make the Son of the Lord a Knight or to marry the Daughter there shall be taken but twenty
Wigorniensis mentioned by that learned Knight Sr. Roger Twisden in his preface to the Laws of William the Conquerour published by the eminently learned Mr. Selden informs us did importune Maud the Empresse ut eis Edwardi Regis Leges observare liceret quia optimae erant That the Laws of King Edward might be observed because they were the best And when William the Conquerour ordered the Rents and Revenues of such as held of him to be paid into the Exchequer it was non simpliciter nec haeres ab hereditate nec ut ab ipso haereditas tollitur sed simul cum haereditate sub Regis custodia constitutus tempâ—râ— pupillaris aetatis Not to take away the Inheritance but to keep and educate him during his Minority For It could be no inconvenience to the publick welfare of the Nation to have the Children of the best ranck and quality for such were then the Tenants in Capite and by Knight service virtuously and nobly educated in Arts and Arms whereby to be enabled to do their Prince and Country service and their Lands and Estates in the interim to be protected and defended from Neighbour or other injuries Nor to be married to their own degree or a nobler quality when as by the means of intermarriages betwixt the Saxons Normans as between Lucia the Sister of Morchar Earl of Northumberland a Saxon and Juo Talbois a great Norman Baron and betwixt Ralph de waiet a Saxon by a British or Welch Woman Emme the Daughter of William Fitz Osbern Earl of Hereford by which he was by the Conquerour made Earl of the East Angles And many more which might be instanced their mutual discontents and animosities calming into reconciliations and friendships had the like effect as the tye and kindness of the intermarriages had not long before in King Ina's time who himself marrying with Guala a British woman his Lords and great men intermarrying with the Welch Scots their Sons also marrying with their Daughters the Nation became to be as Gens una one people in a near consociation and relation and the Norman H. 1. afterwards found it to be not unsuccessefull in his own marriage with Matilda the Daughter of Malcolm King of Scots by the Sister or Niece of Edgar Atheling of the Saxon Royal line It was no grievance when the Charter of Liberties which was the original of a great part of our after Magna Charta was granted to the people of England by K. H. 1. who is therein said omnes malas consuetudines quibus Anglia opprimebatur auferre to abolish all the evil customs with which England was oppressed when it would have been strange that Tenures in Capite and by Knight service should remain as a part of the Kings just prerogative and be so well liked of and approved consilio consensu Baronum By advice and consent of the Barons if there had been any grievance originally or naturally in them Nor so much as a Semblance of it in the reign of H. 2. when a general Inquisition was made per Angliam cui quis in servitio seculari de jure obnoxius teneretur thorough England What secular or temporal services due by Law were not performed And as little in the Parliament at Clarendon in the same Kings reign where in the presence of the King Bishops Earls Barons and Nobility facta fuit recognitio sive recordatio cujusdam partis consuetudinum libertatum Antecessorum suorum Regis viz. Henrici Avi sui aliorum quae observari debâ—bant in Regno ab omnibus teneri A recapitulation and rehearsal was made of some of the Customs and Liberties of their Ancestors and of the King that is to say of King H. 1. and others which ought of all to be observed and kept in the Kingdom in which there was nothing against the Feudal Laws or Tenures in Capite and by Knights service but many expressions and allowances of them And if otherwise it would have been something strange that the issue and posterity of those Barons should in King Johns time adventure all that could be dear or near unto them to gain the Liberties granted by H. 1. with some addition and never grudge that King the same Prerogative when as hazarding the forfeiture of their own Magna Charta of Heaven to gain a Magna Charta on Earth for their posterities They had greatly over-powered their King at Running Mede where their Armies stood in procinctu acie Facing one another Pila minantia pilis Threatning death and distruction to each other or would so willingly have hung up their Shields and Launces and returned to their peace and obedience by accepting of that Magna Charta if they had not taken it to be as much for their own defence the good of the Kingdom as it was for his nor so willingly afterwards in the reign of King Henry the 3 d. his Son have clad themselves in Steel made a Combination and bouâ—d themselves by oath one to another never to submit to a peace until they had a just performance of what his Father had granted them endured the Popes then direful Fulminations and never rested until the King himself had confirmed that Magna Charta by a most solemn oath in procession with the Bishops who with lighted Tapers in their hands anathematiz'd all the infringers thereof if Tenures in Capite and the enableing their Prince to defend them had not been a part of their own Liberties nor could they be imagined to be otherwise when as by an Act of Parliament also of that King the great Charter was to be duely read in all Counties of England and Writs and Letters were sent to all the Sheriffs of England commanding them by the oaths of twelve Knights of every County to enquire what were the antient Rights and Liberties of the People no return was ever made that Tenures in Capite and by Knight service either were or could be any obstructions to them or that so often bloodily contested and too dearly purchased Magna Charta nor was it any publique grievance when as in the Parliament of 26 H. 3 in a great contest betwixt him and the Baronage and great men of England touching his ill Government and diverse exactions and oppressions the profits which he had by his Tenures and Escheats were said to have been sufficient to have kept him from a want of mony and oppressing his Subjects Nor in Anno 42. H. 3. when the King upon those great complaints and stirres betwixt him and the then Robustious and sturdy Barons of England occasioned by his misgovernment which busied the people with Catalogues of grievances he by his Writs or Commissions appointed in every County of England Quatuour milites qui considerarent quâ—t et quantis granaminibus simpliciores a fortioribus opprimuntur et inquirent diligenter dâ— singulis quaerelis et injurijs a quocunque factis
find the way to the ears or audience of so many worthy and just Kings and Princes as this Kingdom hath been happy in who would have been as willing to give a remedy as they could have been to seek it if there had been any ground or cause for it that so many Petitions of small concernments or of no greater consequence than for the paving of Streets killing of Crows not taking of young Herns out of their nests without license of the owner of the ground and the like should get admittance and cause Acts of Parliament to be made thereupon and that of Tenures in Capite if any grievance could at all be found in them and of so long a continuance which usually makes light burthens to be heavy should be so dipped in a Lethe or Oblivion as not at all to be remembred Which had nothing at all of grievance in their essence or being understood of them in the making of the Statute of 1 H. 8. against Empson and Dudley by whom the Kings Subjects had been sore hurt troubled and greived in causing untrue Offices to be found retorning of Offices that never were found and in changing Offices that were found No Grievance perceived to be in them in Primo Jacobi when in the Statute concerning Respites of Homage there was a Proviso that in case it shall be thought fit for the true knowledge and preservation of the Tenures appertaining to the Crown and so ordered in the open Court of Exchequer that proces should issue out of the said Court against any came not within the Suspition or Jealousy of a Grievance when in the Parliament of 7. Jacobi Regis Sr. Francis Bacon then his Majesties Sollicitor in his speech as one of the House of Commons in Parliament to the Lords in Parliament perswading them to joyn with the Commons to Petition the King to obtain liberty to treat of a Composition with his Majesty for Wards and Tenures acknowledged in the name of that Parliament that the Tree of Tenures was planted into the Prerogative by the Antient Common Law of England fenced in and preserved by many Statutes and yeildeth to the King the fruit of a great Revenue and that is was a noble Protection that the young Birds of the Nobility and good Families should be gathered and clucked under the Wings of the Crown Nor in Primo Car. primi in the Act of Parliament touching the rating of Officers Fees in the Exchequer upon pleadings of Licences or Pardons for Alienations when the Lords and Commons in that Parliament assembled did declare that the Kings Tenures are a Principal flower of the Crown which being in England the safety and protection of the people cannot be said or proved to be adorned by their sorrows and miseries and ought not to be concealed And that in the petition of Right in 3 Car. primi wherein all the Grievances and Burdens of the Subjects and breaches of Laws and Liberties that any way concerned them or their Posterities were enumerated and remedies for the future establishment of the quiet and happines of the people propounded and granted Tenures in Capite and Knight service with their incidents were not reckoned or accounted as Grievances though all that troubled the people were at that time so largly thought and beleived to be redrest as a publick joy upon the Kings granting of that Petition of Right was commanded to be celebrated by the Musique and ringing of Bells in every Parish Church of the Cities of London and Westminster which vied each with other who should proclaim and tell their joyes the loudest And the blaze of numberless Bonfires representing the flame of the peoples affection towards a most gracious Soveraign seemed to turn the sullen night into a morning or day which the Sun beams had newly guilded whilst Alecto and her Sister Furies despairing in their hopes of kindling a sedition and bringing the miseries of a Civil War upon us had thrown by their Torches and employed their Hellish griefs in the tearing of their Snakie loâ—ks Were no Sirtes or Rocks to shipwrack or hurt the people when Sr. Edward Coke who was so willing to have Tenures in Capite and Knight service to be changed into Tenures by Fealty only as of some of the Kings Honors and all their Incidents as Wardships primer seisin Licences of Alienation c. taken away and recompenced by a greater yearly profit then was then had or received by them and a rent to be inseperably annexed to the Crown with some necessary Covenants and Privisoes as he hoped that so good a motion as had been made in the Parliament of 18 Jacobi tending as he thought to the Honor and Profit of the King and his Crown for ever and the quiet and freedome of his Subjects and their Posterities would one way or other by the grace of God and Authority of Parliament take effect and be established could not but acknowledge between Anno 3. Car. Regis primi and the 12 th year of his raign that the Objection that Wardship was a Badge of servitude which would be a Grievance indeed and of the greatest Magnitude was groundless and without a Foundation for that the King by taking money for the marriage of the Ward doth it not as for a Ransome but taketh such moderate sums of money as in respect of the quality and state of the Ward He or She all circumstances considered is able to pay and in regard thereof hath the protection of the Court of Wards during Minority And giving Tenures by Knight service no worse a Character than the Wisdome of Antiquity for his Iustification therein citeth a place out of the Red Book in the Exchequer where it is said that mavult enim princeps domesticos quam Stipendiarios Bellicis apponere casibus the King had rather be served by his own Subjects than Hirelings or Stipendary Souldiers No Scylla or Charybdis taken to be in them in the Parl. of 17. Car. prim at the making of the Act for the better raising and levying of Souldiers for the present defence of the Kingdomes of England and Ireland wherein it being said that by the Laws of this Realm none of his Majesties Subjects ought to be impressed or compelled to goe out of his Country to serve as a Souldier in the Wars they excepted cases of necessity of the sodain coming in of strange enemies into the Kingdome or where they be otherwise bound by the Tenure of their Lands or Possessions In the Remonstrance of the House of Commons 15. December 1641. and that unhappy Amasse and collection of Complaints against the Government the Tenures themselves were not so much as complained of but the exceeding of the Jurisdiction of the Court of Wards that thereby the estates of many Families were weakned some ruined by excessive Fines for Composition for Wardships exacted from them which if in some few particulars where the Estate it self was weak or incumbred with
tenendi Parliamentum so beleived to be true that King John caused it when he sent our English Laws into Ireland to be exemplified and sent thither under the Great Seal of England it is said that every Earldom consisteth of 21 Knights Fees and every Barony of 13 Knights Fees and a third part of a Knights Fee and were of such a value and esteem as they were wont heretofore to bring Actions and Assizes for them and their Homage and Services And so litle lesse in France as the wealth of that great and populous Kingdom is not as may be rationally supposed enough to purchase of the Nobility and Gentry of that Kingdom the transmutation of their Fiefs nobles into the Roturier or Feifs ignobles nor are the Princes or Nobility of Germany likely to be perswaded out of their antient Rights and Tenures into that of the Boors or common sort of People The Nobility and Gentry of England when their Military Tenures and Dependencies shall be taken from them will not upon necessities of War and Danger according to the Tenures of their Lands their Homages and Oaths of Allegiance and their natural and legal Allegiance be able to succour or heâ—p their Prince and Father of their Country their Defender and Common Parent as they have heretofore done when as they stoutly and valiantly helped to guard their Standard and Lions but for want of those which held Lands of them and the Tenures by Knight service will be forced to abide with Gilead beyond Jordan and not be able to imitate their noble Ancestors nor each or any of them bring to his Service three Bannerets sixty one Knights and one hundred fifty four Archers on Horseback as Thomas de Bello campo Earl of Warwick did to E. 3. in anno 21. of his Raign at the Seige of Caleis or as the Earl of Kildare did to King E. 3. in the 25 th year of his Raign when he besieged Calice when he brought one Banneret six Knights thirty Esquires nineteen Hoblers twenty four Archers on Horseback and thirty two Archers on foot It will take away the subjection of the Bishop of the Isle of Man who holdeth of the Earl of Derby as King of the Isle of Man and not of the King of England and therefore cometh not to Parliament Take away from the King Nobility and Gentry who have Lands holden by Knight service all Escheats of such as die without Heirs or forfeit or be convicted of Felony and the Kings Annum diem vastum year day and wast where the Lands are holden of Mesne Lords the Escheats of those that held of Kings imediately being so considerable as the Castle of Barnard in Cumberland and the Counties of Northumberland and Huntington which the Kings of Scotland sometimes held of England came again to the Crown by them and the power which King Edward 1. had to make Baliol King of Scots and to determine the competition for that Kingdom was by reason it was held of him the Earldoms of Flanders and Artois were seised by Francis the 1. as forfeited being Fiefs of the Crown of France Flanders and many other Provinces forced to submit themselves upon some controversies to the Umpirage of France of whom they held Enervate at least if not spoil our original first Magna Charta which was grante by H. 3. tenendum de se heredibus suis and all our Liberties and the many after confirmations of that Magna Charta will be to seek for a support if it shall be turned into Socage the Libâ—rties also of the City of London all other antient Cities and Boroughs and such as antiently and before 9 H. 3. did use to send Burgesses unto Parliament Alter if not destroy the Charter of K. R. 1. granted to the City of London for their Hustings Court to be free of Toll Lastage through all England and all Sea-Ports with many other Priviledges which were granted to be held of the King and his Heirs and the same with many other immunities granted confirmed by King John with a Tenure reserved to him and his Heirs for where no Tenure is reserved nor expressed though it should be said absque aliquo inde reddendo it shall be intended for the King and the Law will create a new Tenure by Knight service in Capite A Socage Tenure for Cities and Boroughs which have no Ploughs or intermedle not with Husbandry will be improper when as there is not any fictio juris or supposition â—in Law which doth not sequi rationem so follow reason or allude unto it as to preserve the reason or cause which it either doth or would signify but doth not suppose things improper or which are either Heterogeneous or quite contrary Put into fresh disputes the question of precedency betwixt Spain England which being much insisted upon by the Spaniard at the treaty of peace betwixt the two Kingdoms in anno 42. of Q. Eliz. at Calice occasioned by the contests of the Embassadour of Spain and Sir Henry Nevil Embassadour for England it was argued or adjudged that England besides the arguments urged on its behalf viz. Antiquity of Christian Religion more authority Ecclesiastical more absolute authority Political eminency of royal dignity and Nobility of blood ought to have precedency in regard that it was Superiour to the Kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland and the Isle of Man which held of iâ— that Spain had no Kingdom held in Fee of it but was it self Feudatory to France and inthral'd by oath of Subjection to Charles the fifth King of France in anno 1369. holds a great part of the Netherlands of France Arragon both the Indies Sicily Granado and Navarre Sardinia Corsica and the Canary Islands of the Pope Portugal payeth an annual Tribute to him and Naples yearly presents him with a white Spanish Genner and a certain Tribute Lessen and take away the honour of the King in having the principality of Wales Kingdom of Ireland Isle of Man Isles of Wight Gernesey and Jersey holding of England as their Superiour in Capite Enervate or ruine the Counties Palatine of Chester Lancaster Durham and Isle of Ely if the Tenures should be Levelled into Socage Very much damnifie all the Nobility and Gentry of England who hold as they have antiently divers Mannors and Lands or Offices by grand Serjeanty as for the Earls of Chester which belongeth to the Princes of Wales and the eldest Son of the King to carry before the King at his Coronation the Sword called Curtana to be Earl Marshal of England and to lead the Kings Host to be Lord great Chamberlain of England which is claimed by the Earl of Oxford to carry the Sword called Lancaster before the King at his Coronation due to the Earl of Derby as Kings of the Isle of Man to be grand Faulconner or Master of the Hawks claimed by the Earl of Carnarvon and the Kings Champion at his Coronation claimed
detruncatione vel alijs modis juxtâ— quantitatem delicti puniat To be an Hangman or Executioner of such as were condemned to suffer death or any loss of Members according to the nature of their offences could neither be parted with or taken to be any thing but a benefit And that a claim was made by one thâ—â— held Lands in the Isle of Silly to be the Exeâ—cutioner of Felons which there was then usualy done by letting every one of them down in a Basket from a steâ—p Rock with the provision only of two Loaves of Barly bread and a pot of water to expect as they hung the mercy of the Sea when the Tide should bring it in And that those which held by the easy and no dishonourable Tenures of being Tenants in Capite and Knightâ—service should as Mr. Robert Hill a learned and judicious Antiquary in the beginning of the Reign of King James well observeth rack and lease their Lands to their under Tenants at the highest Rents and Râ—tes and neither they nor their Tenants call that a slavery which though none at all may seem to be a far greater burden than any Tenâ—nt in Capite and by Knight service which holdeth of the King or any Tenant that holdeth by knight service of a mesne Lord endureth when as the one is always more like to have the bag and burden which he must pay for laid upon him in his Bargain then the other who is only to welcom a gift or favour for which he payeth but a grateful acknowledgment Nor is there in that which is now so much complained of and supposed to be a Grievance which whatever it be except that which may as to some particular cases happen to the best and most refined Constitutions and the management thereof hath only been by the fault of some people who to be unfaithful and deceive the King in his Wardships or other Duties have some times cast themselves into the trouble and extremityes which were justly put upon them for concealments of Wardships or making fraudulent conveyances to defeat the just Rights of the King or their superiour Lords or by some exorbitances or multiplications of Fees since the erecting of the Court of Wards and Liveries by an Act of Parliament in 32 H. 8. any malum in se original innate or intrinsecal cause of evil or inconvenience in them Active or Prâ—xime meerly arising from the Nature or Constitution of Tenures in Capite and Knight Service To be found upon the most severe examinations and inquiries which may be made of them nor are they so large in their number as to extend or spread themselves into an universality of grievances nor were or are any publick or extraordinary Grievance CHAP. III. Tenures of Lands in Capite and by Knight service are not so many in number as is supposed nor were or are any publick or general grievance FOr the Number of Knights Fees which were holden in Capite and by Knight service of the King have by tract of time Alienations Purprestures Assarts incroachments deafforrestations and concealments been exceedingly lessened and decreased 28015 which were said to be parcel of the 60215 knights Fees created by William the Conquerour being granted afterwards by him or his successors to Monasteries Abbyes Priories and religious houses or parcelled into Glebes or other endowments belonging to Cathedrals Churches and Chantries or given away in Mortmain and very many quillets and parcels of Land after the dissolution of the Abbyes and religious houses not exceeding the yearly value of forty shillings And now far exceeding that value granted in Socage by King Henry the eighth besides many other great quantities of dissolved Abbyes and religious Lands granted to be holden in Socage Much of the Abbye Lands retained in the Crown or Kings hands as part of the Royal Patrimony and many Mannors and great quantities of Land granted to divers of the Nobility gentry and others with reservations many times of Tenures of but half a knights Fee when that which was granted would after the old rate or proportion of knights Fees have been three or four knights Fees or more and somtimes as much or more then that no rule at all as touching the proportions of Lands or Tenures being then in such an abundance of Land and Revenue as by the dissolution of the Abbyeâ— came into the Kings hands or disposing 〈◊〉 all kept which might have made many knights Fees were not seldom granted with a Tenure only of a twentieth or fortieth and sometimes an hundreth part of a knights Fee whereby the knights Fees which were granted to the Religious houses being almost half of the number which William the Conquerour is said at the first to have created might well decrease into a smaller number and many of those which diverse of the Nobility and great men held of the King as those of Ferrers Earl of Darby and the Earls of Chester those that came by marriage as by one of the Daughters and Heirs of 〈◊〉 Earl of Hereford and Essex by escheat as the Earldome of Clare or by Resumptions Dissolution of Priors Alienâ— Knights of St. John of Hierusalem Attainders Escheats or Forfeitures which in the Barons Wars were very many or holden as of honors c. Merging and devolving into the Royal Revenue did take of very many of the number especially since the making of the Act of Parliament in 1 â— 6. cap. 4. that there should be no Tenure in Capite of the King by reason of Lands coming to the hands of him or any of his Progenitors Heirs or Successors by Attainders of Treason misprision of Treason Premunires dissolution or surrender of Religious Houses And not a few of the Mesne Lords and those which held also of the King did make as great an abatement in their Tenures by releasing and discharging their services before the making of the Statute of Quia emptores terrarum granting Lands in Socage Franck Almoigne or by copy of Court Roll and casting out a great part of their Lands as well as the Kings of England did not Forrests Chases many vast Commons which they laid out in Charity for the good of the poorer sort of people infranchising of a great number of Copyholders selling giving away many and great parcels of their demesne Lands disparking of many of their Parks deviding them into many Tenements to be holden in Socage endowing of Churches Chantries religious houses the like the forrests Chases and Commons of the Kingdom making very near a tenth part in ten of the Lands of the Kingdom and the Socage Lands Burgage Franck Almoigne and Copyholds more than two parts in three of all the remainder of the Lands of the Kingdom So as it is not therefore improbable but that there are now not above ten thousand or at most a fourth part of those 62015. Knights Fees to be found And that in antient and former times either by reason that great quantities of Mannors and
wast in the Wards Lands or seised Lands which ought not to be seised Et omnes illi qui sentiunt se super hiis gravatos inde conqueri voluerint audiantur fiat eis Justitia All that were grieved were to be heard and have Justice done them and the Tenant had his remedy by a writ of ne injuste vexes where his Lord did Indebita exigere servitia And least any thing should but come within the suspition of a Grievance or that the power of the Court of Wards and Liveries and the latitude which the Act of Parliament of 32 H. 8. had given it which was to be as fixed as the trust which was committed to it should in the intervalls of Parliaments or seldomest Cases be any thing like to a burden or Inconvenience the disposing and granting of wardships was by King James his Commission and instructions under the great Seal of England in an 1622. to the end that the people might stand assured that he desired nothing more than that their Children and their Lands which should fall unto him by reason of wardships might after their decease be committed in their neerest and trustiest friends or to such as they by will or otherwise commit the charge unto upon such valuable considerations as are just and reasonable that the Parents and Ancestors may depart in greater peace in hope of his gracious favour their friends may see their children brought up in piety and learning and may take such care as is fit for the preservation of their inheritance if they will seek the same in time Ordered that no direction for the finding of any Office be given for the wardship of the body and lands of any Ward until the end of one moneth next after the death of the Wards Ancestor but to the neerest and trustiest friends of the ward or other person nominated by the Ancestor in the wards behalf who may in the mean time become Suiters for the same among whom choice may be made of the best and fittest No composition agreement or promise of any wardship or lease of Lands be made until the office be found and then such of the friends to have preferment as tendred their Petitions within the moneth they yeilding a reasonable composition The Master Attorney Surveyor and other the Officers of the Court of Wards were to inform them selves as particularly as they might of the truth of the Wards estate as well of his Inheritance as of his Goods and Chattels the estate of the deceased Ancestors and of all other due circumstances considerable to the end the Compositions might be such as might stand with the Kings resonable profit and the Ability of the Heirs estate No Escheatâ—r shall inforce any man to shew his evidence That all Leases of Wards lands except in cases of concealment be made with litle or no Fine and for the best improved yearly rent that shall be offered consideration being had of the cautions aforesaid that no recusant be admitted to compound or be assignee of any wardship That where it shall appear that neither the King nor his progenitors within the space of threescore years last past enjoyed any benefit by Wardship Livery Primer seizin Releif Respect of Homage Fiâ—es or mesne rates of any lands the Master and Councel of the said Court were authorized to remit and release all benefit and profit that might accrew to the King thereby And in all cases where covenants were pâ—â—formed to deliver bonds which were taken concerning the same And that upon consideration of circumstances which may happen in assessing of Fines for the marriages of the Wards and renting of their lands either by reason of the broken estate of the deceased want of provision for his wife his great charge of Children unprovided for infirmity or tendernesse of the heir incertainty of the title or greatnesse of incumbrance upon the lands they shall have liberty as those or any other the like comsiderations shall offer themselves to use that good discretion and Conscience which shall be sit in mitigating or abating Fines or Rents to the releif of such necessities In pursuance whereof and the course and usage of that Court as well before as after the said Instructions Wardships nor any Custody or Lease of the Wards or their Lands were not granted in any surprising or misinforming way but by the care and deliberation of the Master and Councel of the Court of Wards and Liveries upon a full hearing and examination of all parties and pretenders they to whom they were granted Covenanting by Indenture under their Hands and Seals with Bonds of great penalties to perform the same to educate the ward according to his degree and quality preserve his lands and houses from waste fell no Coppice Woods grant no Copy-hold estates for lives nor appoint any Steward to keep the Courts without licence and to permit the feodary of the County where the land lieth yearly to survey and superintend the care thereof and had reasonable times of payment allowed them And could not likely produce any grievances in the rates or assessing of Fines for marriages or for rents reserved during the minority of the wards or for primer seisin or any other Compositions when as the Kings of England since the Raign of the unhappy R. 2. and the intermission of the Eyres and those strict enquiries which were formerly made of the frauds or concealment of the Escheators or their Deputies in the businesse of Tenures and Wardships and their neglect or not improving of them most of those former Officers and those that trucked with them not doing that right which they ought to their Consciences and their Kings and Benefactors Have for some ages past been so willing to ease their people or comply with their desires as they have noâ— regarded aâ— all their own profit or taken such a care as they might to retain â—hose just powers which were incident or necessary to their Royal Government but by leaving their bounty and kindnesse open to all the requests or designs of the people have like tender hearted parents given away much of their own support and sustenance to gratify the blandishments or necessities of their Children and not only enervated but dismembred and quitted many of their Regal powers and just Prerogatives in their grants of Lands and Liberties and thereby too much exhausted and abandoned the care of their own Revenue and Treasure as may easily appear to any that shall take but a view of those many Regalities Franchises and Liberties which being to be as a Sacrum patrimonium unalienable have heretofore either been too liberally granted by the Kings Progenitors of which H. 3. was very sensible in his answer to the Prior or Master of the Hospital of St. Johns at Jerusalem or not well looked after in those Incroachments and Usurpations which have been made upon them Or consider the very great cares and providence as well as prudence of former
ages in the Managing Collecting and Improveing of the Kings Revenue in England whether certain or casual The strict Inquiries Orders and the care of every thing which might make a profit or prevent a damage which made some of the Kings of England to be so litle wanting money as King Canutus as the Abby Book of Ramsey hath recorded it was able out of his Hanaper or travailing Trunk when he lodged at Vassington in Northamptonshire to lend the Bishop Etheruus who sâ—bita pulsus occasione had a great occasion to use it good store of money And that in William the Conquerours time and in the height of his plenty and prosperity no repairs of Castles and Houses were made but upon accompt by Oath Inquiries were made by some of the succeeding Kings and their Officers after windfalen trees a few trees were not given nor Cheverons nor Rafters allowed towards the repairing of a Grange or Farm without the warrant of the great Seal of England Judges commanded to look to the Fines imposed in the Eyreâ— or Circuits and in all the Eyres Circuits a Clark who kept particular Rolles or Duplicates of the Judges Rolles or Records of their Proceedings was for the King especially appointed and attended and as smal a sum as 2 d. accompted for a Deodand Nor was any thing as far as Humane vigilance Industry or Providence might foresee prevent or remedy suffered to be done or continue that might endammage or lessen the Royal Revenue which King Henry the 3 d. could so watch over as the Court of Exchequer hath sometimes seen him there sitting and taking his own accompts Which kinds of wariness and care have been so much disused or neglected by many of his Successors as though by time and the course thereof the alteration of the value of mony Coyne from twenty pence the ounce to five shillings a peny the ounce of Silver the prizes rates of Provision and Commodities to be bought with it almost yearly raised and inhaunced and the more chargeable way of living which followed thereupon might have put them in mind to have given lesse or demanded more for what was justly their own when as in the 14 th year of the Reign of King Edward the 3 d. 40 shillings per diem was thought by the King and his Councel to be a royal and sufficient expence for Edward Baliol King of Scots his train whilst he tarried at London and 6 s. per diem when he travailed And in the reign of King H. 6. Medow-ground in Leicestershire was valued but at eight pence an Acre and that as appears by a Remonstrance made in Parliament in or about the 11 th year of the reign of that King who was King in possession of France as well as of England now not above 227 years agoe he did right worshipfully as the Record saith maintain the charge of his houshold with sixteen thousand pounds Sterling per annum and could not then defray it with less than Twenty four thousand pounds per annum which now cannot well be done under ten times as much when an Annuity or Pension of ten pounds or twenty marks per annum which was then sufficient for the Kings better sort of Servants is now scarce enough for a Foot-man and the most ordinary sort of inferior Servants Did notwithstanding not lessen their bounty or raise the Rents or Rates of their Revenues but permitted their Escheators in matters of Tenures and Wardships to adhere unto their former courses and find the value of the Lands in their Offices or Inquisitions at the old or small yearly values the rule which the Escheators took for the finding of the values of the Lands upon Inquisitions being at the highest but the tenth part of the true yearly value which was the guide also for the rate of the primer seisins where they were to be taken as much lower as the unwarrantable kindness of too many of those which were trusted and should have looked better unto it could perswade them The Feodaries also upon their Surveys seldom raising the yearly value to more than about a third part of such a gentle value as he should be entreated to adde to that which the Jurors and Escheators had friendly found it So as somtimes a Mannor of above one hundred pounds per annum was found but at thirteen shillings four pence per annum and other times if mingled with other lands of a great yearly value at no more than forty shillings per annum And no longer agoe than in the reign of King Chaâ—les the first above one thousand poundâ— per annum hath been found to be but of the yearly vaâ—ue of twenty Marks And an Estate consisting of very few Mannors and as few Coppyholders but most in Fâ—rms and demâ—snes upon an improved and almost racked Rent worth six thousand pounds per annum found at no greater yearly value than one hundred eighty three pounds eleven shillings which is lesse than the thirtieth parâ— â—hough the Escheators with Knights and Gentlemen and sometimes men of greater mark and quality were Commissioners the Jurors made up somtimes of Gentlemen and most commonly of substantial Freeholders and all of them such as might better have understood an Oath who takeing an ill custom to be warrant enough for a bad Conscience did when they were by the Writ to enquire upon their Oaths de vero Annuo valore of the true yearly value of the Lands thâ—nk that they did honestly and well enough to find it at a very small or low yearly value because they were sure it was weâ—l worth so much Neither were the paymâ—nts o◠〈◊〉 of Homage so troublesom as to make a complaint of when as by an Order made in 13 Eliz. by virtue of her privy Seal by the Lord Burghley Lord Treasurer and the Chancellour and Barons of the Exchecquer which the Lords and Commons of England in primo Jacobi did pray and procure to be enacted by Parliament It was after such an easy and old fashioned rate or value of the Lands as it was but in every fifth Term to be paid in the Exchecquer by a rate and apportionment and might have been saved by an actual doing of Homage as was antiently used to be done upon their Livery and first coming to their Lands and their respit of Homage and howsoever may as well be taken to be a favour as they do of their mesne Lords or one to another in paying three shillings four pence per annum as a quit Rent for respit of suit of Court And that it was therein and thereupon also enacted that no processe ad faciendum Homagium or fidelitatem scire facias Capias or distresse should issue out of the Exchequer but upon a good ground And that the Clerks of the Treasurers Remembrancer in the Exchequer shall pay all issues that any shall loose after he hath paid ordinary Fine for respite of Homage
and so may be proved by any of their Acquittances Neither were the Rates for Licences of Alienations burdensom when they were paid by the rich and improving and most commonly advantage taking purchasors or by the gainers by the settlement or alteration of Lands or Estates and are in passing Fines not usually above a thirtieth part and so after an antient un-improved small yearly value as six thousand pounds per annum hath within three years last past paid but a little above one hundred and twenty pounds for a Composition or Licence of Alienation Which with other of the Kings casual profits by a long remissenesse and usage of some ages past whilst the people to save their own Purses and favour one another choosing the open Rode and track and following the precedents and too common use of under valuations which hath ever been and is the great obstructor and diminisher of royal Revenues would as much as they could never forsake or go much out of it as is visible enough in the Escuageâ— upon Knights Fees and valuatioÌ„s in several ages Kings reigns in that of a tenth in 36 H. 3. demanded in Parliament to be paid out of all the Ecclesiastical Revenues after the full yearly value where adjuncto magnae verbâ— offensionis as Mathew Paris tells us it was taken the worse in regard it was required to be taxed non secundum estimationem pristinâ—m sed secundum â—stimationem noâ—am ad inquisitionem strictissimam not according to the former estimation or rates but a nâ—w and most severe valuation was not at all granted And in a Parliament at Bury in 5â— H. 3. the Clergy denyed to be rated by the Laity or Justa alta taxatione By a just high valuation Sed tantum ut taxatio staret antiqua But only that the old taxation might stand nor was it much otherwise in the rates of fifteens and other proportions of taxes granted by Parliaments though somtimes ordered to be assessed upon oath the greatest tye and obligations that can be laid upon men and their Consciences wherein litle or more then a tenth or smal part was paid or collected of the true yearly value But like a numerous family of Children spending much wanting much and drawing all that they can from the kind and self-denying common parent together with the bounty and munificence which Kings and Princes are not seldom necessitated unto in the way of Government and care of the generality would never be brought to any just valuation or improvement no more than that of customs for goods exported or imported at the rate of twelve pence in the pound and for the subsidies given by Parliament whereupon no more was used to be paid than two shillings or two shillings eight peâ—ce in the pound for Moveables Debts defalked and 4 s. in the pound and most commonly not so much according to the yearly value of Lands Rents Annuities or other yearly profits after an easy and accustomed great undervaluation no more than that of Tenths and first Fruits or of Taxations or Valuations of Benefices in the Kings Books at the tenth or fifth of the true yearly value though every age of one or two ages last past and every thirty or twenty years in the age of Century in which we now live have hugely raised the yearly value of Lands every one striving who shall do it most in their own particular Estates And if there were not as there are so very many plain and evident Demonstrations of it may well be believed to be possible when the publick though made up of the private is dayly gnawed and preyed upon by the private and every one lurches and takes what he can from the Publique to add to his private when the numberlesse Number of the Private is more than the Head or Monarch when the people are to assesse themselves and will ease one another when interest and partiality are the Loadstones that attracts and the Cards and Compasses which the most of men do sail by every man is a well-wisher to the Publique but very few well-doers every one pretends good unto it but intend if not all yet a great deal more unto themselves and do make it their businesse to be the Kings Cozens though they are not of the blood-Royal and by the help of bad Consciences and no good affection to the publique or Common-weale do think no more evil to be in such purloinings than to fetch or take water from a great River or stones or gravel from a vast and high Mountain And the Nobility and Gentry and most of the Land-Lords in England have for many years last past in the publick Assessements which were made to maintain the miseries and iniquityes of our latter times to their cost and grievance experimented that where the Tenants were to pay for their Stock they could so order it as to lay the most of the Burden upon the Land-Lords upon pretences that they had but a small Stock of Cattle when it was in their power not only to undervalue what they had but to lessen or make it more any Fair or Market-day before or after Wherby and the effects which best discovers the truth and intention of all men and their matters be their pretences never so plausible much coloured or varnished over the Conclusion will necessarily follow the Premises that the outsides and noyse of great ayds and Subsidyes have been always a great deal more than the reality of them that the Kings and Queens of England have always had in their Revenues fair blossomings or Bloomes but little more than the Tenth of it hath come to be fruits or gatherings into their Treasuries witnesse if there were nothing else to prove it the great and more than treble or a better Improvement which hath been lately made of them since they came to be wrongfully possessed by private men and that the Revenues of the Kings and Princes of England could never yet arrive to the Fate of great Rivers which fertilizeing all the Neighbouring shores and carrying many a great Burden and Vessel which dayly sail to and fro upon them are notwithstanding so farre from emptying or impairing themselves as the further they run they are sure enough to be made greater by an Addition of many little Brooks and great Rivers which fall into them But by a continual emptying and deflux must of necessity sink it self into a great decay and deficiency when as that which was accounted Providence and good Husbandry in King H. 2. or H. 1. if Samuel Daniel and others be not mistaken to change his Rent Provisions of Corn Victuals which in every County was paid in Specie into yearly Rents or Summs of money because conâ—luebat ad Regis Curiam Multitudâ— Coloâ—orum oblatis vomeribus in signum deficientis Agriculturae A Multitude of Plow-men and Husband-men occasioned probably by the many vast Demeasns Commons Woods and Forrests which then
themselves for their Allegiance to their King following of the Scripture their Consciences and the known Laws of the Land were notwithstanding their many Petitions and Importunities several years whilst their estates were Sequestred and taken from them kept in a starving Condition before they could be heard to litle purpose where Sons and too well descended to be so unworthy were invited to accuse their Loyal Aged Parents whom the Jewes would have rent their Clothes to have seen encouraged and made to be sharers in the spoyl of their Father Not like the Committee or Court improperly called at Salters-Hall for relief of Creditors against their imprisoned Debtors where some of those Judges and Committees if not wronged by printed Complaints were in good hopes to have made some preparations to sell the Debtors Lands to their Friends or Kindred at good Penniworths Nor like the Committee for Plundring rather than Plundred Ministers who to take away all the Benefices of England and Wales from the Tribe of Levi and confer them upon the Tribe of Issachar and their Factious and Mechanique guifted Brethren and keep out the Orthodox and learned Clergy could make their costly orders for the trial of them that were more Learned then themselves concerning the Grace of God and their utterance for Preaching of the Gospel with private and deceitful marks and litle close couched or interposed Letters hid or put under or over some other Letters whereby to intimate to their Subcommittees in the Countries that howsoever the men were without exception and found to be so upon Certificates and Examination they were to be delayed and sent from Post to Pillar and tired boâ—h in their Bodies and Purses and be sure never to be instituted and inducted But was a Court compos'd of grave learned knowing and worthy Masters of the Wards such as William Marquesse of Winchester William Lord Burghley and his Son the Earl of Salisbury and many other who made not the Court or any of the businesse thereof to Lacquy after their own Interest Had for Attorney Generalls of that Court who sate as men of Law and Judges therein and assistants to the Masters of the Wards Richard Onslow Esq afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons Sr. Nicholas Bacon Knight afterwards a most learned Lord keeper of the great Seal of England and a great Councellor of Estate to Queen Elizabeth Sr. Henry Hobart afterwards Lord cheif Justice of the Court of Common-pleas Sr. James Ley Knight and Baronet afterwards Lord cheif Justice of the Court of Kings Bench after that Earl of Marleborough and Lord Treasurer of England Sr. Henry Calthrop Knight Sr. Rowland Wandesford Knight and Sr. Orlando Bridgeman Kt. now Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common pleas all very eminently learned Lawyers and of great estates honour honesty and worth in their several generations who upon any difficult or weighty matter of Law to be discussed in that Court did usually intreat the presence and had the assistance of the Lord cheif Justices Lord cheif Baron or of any of the other learned Judges of the Land whom they should please to invite unto them where a variety of learning grave deliberations a great care of Justice and right reason most lively and clearly represented have left to posterity as guides and directions for after ages those conclusions and resolutions of cases of great learning and weight in that Court reported by the Lord Dier Cook and other learned Sages of the Law Nor were the Masters of the Wards Attorneys Auditors or Escheators loosely tied by Oaths as some of the Committee Jurisdictions were when they did swear only in general faithfully according to their best skill and knowledge to discharge the trust committed to them and would not for favour or affection reward or gift or hopes of reward or gift break the same Or as little restraining them from Acts of Oppression or Injustice as the Oath of the Controlers for the sale of the Kings and Queens lands ordered by that which called it self a Parliament 17. July 1649. The Oath of the Commissioners for managing the estates of Delinquents Sequestrations at Haberdashers-Hall Ordered by no better an Authority the 15 of April 1650. or that which by that which would be called an Act of Parliament of the 10 of December 1650. for establishing an high Court of Justice within the Counties of Norfforlk Suffolk Cambridge and Huntington for the Tryal of Delinquents was only ordered was to be taken by those that were to be the Judges that they should well and truly according to the best of their skill and knowledge execute the several powers given unto them Which bound them not from doing wrong to those whom they made to bear the burdens of all the cruelties which they could possibly lay upon them But were compassed and hedged in by Oaths as warily restraining as they were legal for the Master of the Wards was by Act of Parliament enjoyned to swear to minister Justice to Rich ond Poor to the best of his cunning and power to take no gift or reward in any Case depending before him and to deliver with speed such as shall have to do before him The Attorney was sworn truely to counsel the King and the Master of the Court and with all speed and diligence to endeavour the hearing and determination indifferently of such matters and causes as shall depend before the Master of the Wards and shall not take any gift or reward in any matter or cause depending in the same Court The Auditors sworn to make a true allowance in their Offices to every person which shall be accomptant before them and not to take or recieve of Poor or Rich any gift or reward in any matter or cause depending or to be discussed in the Court but such as shall be ordinarily appertaining to their Offices and the Escheators to treat all the people in their â—ayliwicks truely and righteously to do right to every man aswell to poor as to rich do no wrong to any man neither for promise love nor hate nor no mans right disturb do nothing whereby right may be disturbed letted or delayed and shall take their Enquests in open places and not privy And might better content the people Then when in former ages the Wardships and their disposing were left to the care and order of the Chancellour as to Thomas Bâ—cket in H. 2. time or to Hubert de Burgh Chief-Justice and Earl of Kent in the Reign of H. 3. sometimes to the Treasurers or Chamberlains most comonly let to farm by Escheators sometimes by under-Sherifs or when the next Wardships or Escheats that should happen were before hand assigned towards the payment of some of the Kings Debts as to William de Valence Earl of Pembroke in the Reign of E. 1. or that the Wardships and Escheats which should happen in 6 or 7. Counties were before hand granted to some particular man And can
as an Escheat annexed to the Crown of England And as litle when any held of the King in Capite by some other Service and not in Chivalry and by Knight Service as the Town of Shrewsbury to cause 12 Towns-men apud Angliae Reges excubare cum in illa urbe agerent To watch and ward about the Kings Person which the affrighted Cromwel with his guilty and terrified Conscience would have been well content with totidemque concomitare cum venatum prodirent and as many to attend him whilst he rode on hunting Or when Richard Pigot of Stanford in the County of Hereford or his Ancestors had two Yard Land given him there by the King to hold in Capite per servitium conducendi Thesaurum Domini Regis which Sir Edward Coke calleth Firmamentum pacis et robur Belli the Foundation of Peace and strength of War de Hereford usque ad London quotiescunque opus fueries sumptibus Domini Regis et in redeundo sumptibus suis propriis et etiam summonendi Episcopium Hereford ad portas Manerij dicti Episcopi de Bromyard si contingat Dominum Regem praedictum Episcopum implacitare By the Service of conducting the Kings Treasure from Hereford to London as oft as there should be occasion at the Kings charge in going thither and at his own in his retorn and to summon the Bishop of Hereford at the Gates or door of his Manour of Bromyard when it should happen that the King should implead him Never troubled the heart of Roger the Kings Taylor when the King gave him a good quantity of Land in Halingbury in the County of Essex tenendum per Serjeantiam solvendi ad Scaccarium Domini Regis unum Acum argenteum quolibet anno in crasâ—ino Sancti Martini To hold the Serjeanty of paying yearly at the Exchequer upon the morrow of St. Martin a silver Needle Nor did the Donees or those who had those Lands of so free a gift or bounty esteem them to be any burden could it be heavy or troublesome to their Heirs or those that should succeed them in those Lands whenas our Kings did successively give away so great a part of the Lands of England as were holden in Capite and by Knight Service either to follow or serve them in the Wars for their own defence as well as theirs or for their attendance whâ—rein they received more honour than their Princes gained by it at their Coronations or other great Solemnities by grand Serjeanty or by petit Serjeanty to present them at some times of the year with a Rose or a Hawk or a pair of Spurs or an Arrow to keep them a Hawk or Hounds provide necessaries in their Progresse for their houshold Expences Sumpter Horses in their Journey to some particular place Straw for their Bed and Rushes for their Chamber as if they gave away all to receive almost nothing for it and so willingly as be put themselves to some trouble to devise what kind of grateful acknowledgments should be made them in a perpetuity or as far as they could reach to a supposed or hoped for Eternity that many of their Tenures where there were not necessaryes in war or peace reserved do seem to be but so far for pleasure and merryment as they did not care what was reserved so it was but something as to hold the Kings head at Sea when he should sail betwixt Dover and VVhitsand or hold the Cord by which the Sail was tyed when the Queen not to shoot with Guns and Canons as some of the Covenanters for the late Kings good could find the way to do at his deer Wife the Queen Mother that now is should pass the Seas into France cum multis aliis with many other sortes and kinds not here to be enumerated without the trouble of a volume which those honester times having a better opinion of gratitude and not thinking it to be so crazy or mortal as now every one finds it to be did liberally create and bestow No wrong was done to them that had Lands given to them and their Heirs by a Mesne Lord before the Statute of Quia emptores terrarum as our forefathers the Saxons long before the Conquest believed when as Byrhtrick a Saxon of great note and eminency in Kent holding Lands of Aelsrick a Mesne Lord did by his last will and testament in the first place give to his natural Lord a Bracelet of fourscore marks of Gold one Hatchet of half as much four Horses two of them trapped two Swords trimmed two Hawks and all his Hounds and to the Lady his wife one Bracelet of thirty marks of Gold and one Horse to intreat that his Testament wherein he devised great quantities of land to divers persons and to charitable uses and the Lords consent was very necessary stand may and prayed his dear leefe Lord that he do not suffer that any man his Testament do turn aside Nor to the County of Hertford or places adjacent when Leofranus Abbot of St. Albans gave in Edward the Confessors reign unto Turnot Waldef and Thurman three Knights the Mannor of Flamsteed in the County of Hertford to be holden by the service ut regionem vicinam contra latrones defendâ—rent to the end that they should defend the neighbour-hood against Thieves And no hurt to the Common-wealth when as the Nobility and great men of England imitating the bounty and munificence of their Kings and Princes for the enabling themselves to serve their King Country did bountifully give much of their own Estates Demesâ—s to divers of their friends followers to hold of them by Knight service or some honourable seldom services about their Persons or Estates As the Earls of Oxford Arundel Norfolk Hereford Essex Hertford Gloucester Leicester Chester Lancaster Northumberland other antient Earls did when they severally gave to those who had so litle wrong done them by their kindness as they have for many ages and doe yet continue men of worship and great estates in their Counties as many as 100 Knights fees many times more and seldome less to be holden of them by Knight service which at the now value of Lands reckoning every Knights fee as Sr. Edward Cooke doth if at 100 l. per annum which is the lowest value would be 10000 l. per annum at 200 l. per an which is the most probable medium rate will amount unto no less than 20000 l. per annum That Harden Castle in Cheshire with the lands thereunto belonging of a great yearly value in the County of Chester was given by an Earl of Chester to be holden of the Earl and his heirs per senescalciam comitum Cestriae by the service of being Stewards to the Earls of Chester Or that the Castle and Mannor of Tunbridge and the Mannors of Vielston Horsmund Melyton and Pettis in the County of Kent were holden by Richard de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford of
and be admitted Turn the Tenures in Capite which are only so called from the duty of Homage and the acknowledgement of Soveraignity and Headship in the King into a Tenure in Socage which is so far from acknowledgeing the King to be chief or to ingage as the other doth their Lands to do him service as it is but a Tenure as it were a latere is no more then what one Neighbour may acknowledge to hold or doe to another for his Rent or money be a Lease for a Life or one or more years or as Tenant at will and levels and makes rather an equality then any respect of persons which if ever or at all reasonable or fit to be done is in a democratical or popular way of Government but will be unexampled and is not at all to be in Monarchy may make many of the people which are not yet recovered out of a gainful Lunacy to beleive they were in the right when they supposed themselves to be the Soveraigns Ireland which in the subverting Olivers time was to have their Swords by the like Tenure turned into Plow-shares though their warres and taxes were never intended to leave them was to pay but 12000 l. per annum to turn their better Tenures Conditions into worse will if they be not come again to their wits expect the like prejudicial bergain Bring many inconveniences and mischiefs to the Nobility and Gentry of Scotland if their Tenures in Capite and Knight service and those which are holden of them as Mesn Lords shall as ours be taken away with their services and dependencies Licences of Alienation benefits of Investitures infeodations and the like it being amongst others as a reason given for Wardships in that Kingdom in the Laws of Scotland in the reign of their Malcombe the 2. which was before the Conquerours entring into England Ne non suppeterent Regiae Majestatis facultates to the end that the King should have where-withall to defend the Kingdom And a letting loose of a fierce and unruly people who are best of all kept in awe order by a natural long well enough liked subjection to their Mesne Lords and Superiours into a liberty which cannot be done without a disjointing and over-turning all the Estates of the Nobility and Gentry of that Kingdom and may like our late English Levellers either endeavour to do it or bring themselves and the whole Nation to ruine by a renversing of the fundamental Laws and that antient order and constitution of that Kingdom wherein the estates and livelyhood of all the Nobility and Gentry and better part of the people are hugely concerned And besides a great damage to the King in his Revenues and profits arising out of such Tenures if not recompenced by some annual payment Will howsoever take away that antient Homage and acknowledgement of Superiority which from that Kingdom to this of England cannot be denyed to be due and to have been actually and antiently done and presidented and not in one but several ages fidem obsequium ut vassallos Angliae Regibus superioribus dominis jurejurando promisisse to have done their Homage and Fealty as vassals to our English Kings and bound themselves by oath thereunto as namely to Alfred Edgar Athelstane William the Conqueror William Rufus Maud the Empresse Henry the second and Edward the first the later of whom with all the Baronage of England in a Letter to the Pope did upon the search of many Evidences and Records stoutly assert it Will be no small damage and disturbance to the Kings other Regalities and Prerogatives and in the Tenures of the Cinque Ports who are to provide fifty ships for the guarding of the Seas and the Town of Maldon in Essex one the Town of Lewis in Sussex as the Book of Doomsday informeth where King Edward the Confessor had 127 Burgesses in dominio eorum consuetudo erat si Rex ad Mare custodiendum sine se suos mittere voluisset de omnibus hominibus cujuscunque terrae fuissent colligebant 20 sâ—lidos hos habebant qui in manibus arma custodieâ—ant had 127 Burgesses in his demeâ—ne of the King and when he sent any of his men to guard the Seas they were to gather 20 s. a man which was to be given to those that manned the Ships in Colchester where the custom then was that upon any expedition of the Kings by Sea or Land every house was to pay six pence ad victum soldariorum Regis towards the quarter or livelyhood of the Kings Souldiers and likewise prejudice him in his grand and Petit Serjeanties and many thousand other reservations of honour and profit by and upon Tenures in Capite and Knight service which revived and called out of their Cells wherein those that are to do and pay them are content they should sleep and take their rest for ever would go near to make and maintain an Army with men and Provisions The King when the Tenures in Capite shall be taken away shall never be able to errect his Standard and to call thereunto all that hold Lands Fees Annuities and Offices of him to come to his assistance according to the duty of their Tenures and the Acts of Parliament of 11 H. 7. chap. 18. And 19. H. 7. chap. 1. of forfeiting the Lands and Offices holden of him under the penalties which was the only means which the late King his Father had to protect as much as he could himself and his Subjects or to manifest the justice of his Cause in that War which was forced upon him and was very useful and necessary heretofore for the defence of the Kings of England and their People and proved to be no otherwise in the Bellum Standardi so called in the reign of King Stephen where some of the Barons of England and some of the English Gentry gathered themselves to the Royal Standard and repelled and beat the King of Scotland and in several Kings reigns afterwards repulsed the Scotch and Welch Hostilities and Invasions and at Floddon Field in King H. 8 ths time when the Duke of Norfolk and his Son the Earl of Surrey and diverse of the Nobility and Gentry which accompanied them vanquished and slew the King of Scots The benefit whereof the Commons of England had so often experimented as in diverse Parliaments they Petitioned the King and Lords to cause the Lord Marchers and other great men to repair into their Counties and defend the borders and was so necessary in France to assemble together the Bans and Arrierebans which were but as our Tenants in Capite as it helped King Charles the 7 th of France to recover that Kingdom again out of the hands and possession of our two Henries the 5. and 6. Kings of England And if any Rebellion or Conspiracy shall hereafter happen When Cum saepe coorta Seditio saevitque animis ignobile vulgus Fury and Rage of
Tenures in Capite and finding of Offices wherein the Evidences being produduced and many Times found did not only find but declare what Estate the deceased was seised of and if the truth did not then appear which could hardly be hid when as the Jury were commanded by the Writ of Diem clausit extremum to inquirâ— upon their Oaths of what Estate the last Ancestor dyed seised of and that the vigilancy and cares of the Feodaries and Escheators who were also to be present to attend them would cause them to be the more careful and if the fraud of the Heir should be able to make its way or escape thorough them the Estate found in the Office would after prove to be an Evidence against them and either overthrow or perplex the Knavery of such wicked designs The Recompence of 100000 l. per Annum if it could be raised without Injustice or the breach of the Laws of God Nature and Nations and our oftentimes confirmed Magna Charta and the inforcing of 19 men in every 20 to bear burdens which nothing at all appertains to them will not be adaequate to the losse of a great part of the Kings Revenue which did serve for the maintenance of his Crown and Dignity and to exempt and ease the Subjects of extraordinary Taxes and Assessements which the Necessity of Princes for the good and Defence of the Kingdom must otherwise bring upon them Nor to the want of Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service the Services Incidents belonging unto them being a certain and never failing Defence of himself and the Kingdom Castle-guard Licence of Alienations giving him notice and continuing him safe in the Change of his Tenants being so necessary to Government as some have been grievously fined for alienating their Lands in Capite without it Mariage Dependancy of the Heirs which hold of him Livery and Reliefs Grand Serjeantyes and a great part of the Honour and Priviledges which all other neighbour Kings ond Princes are neither desired to part with nor can he perswaded so much to lessen themselves and their Regalities For gold and Silver and precious Stones or any thing lesse than the whole Kingdom of England it self is not of value or to be compared to the Honour of a King and the homage and duty of his Subjects the Gratitude Faith and Promises of their Ancestors which should descend to them with the Lands holden by those Tenures whenas Omnes habent Causam a primo et ex tunâ— non ut ex nunc are bounden to the Cause which obliged their first Ancestor and Progenitor and are to consider that it is now as it was then a most ready means and help which did and doth naturally and kindly arise for the Defence of themselves and the Kingdom for as it is not the weight of an inestimable Dyamond or Ruby that makes either of them to be better than a Flint or any other Stone but the lustre vertue and scarcenesse of them and that a greater poise or weight of a man makes not a Solomon an Alexander Sir-named the great or an Aristotle but that all men and things are to be esteemed according to the vertues and Excellencyes which are in them so it will not be the yearly Profit in money which was made of the Wardships primer Seisins Liveryes and Incidents which belong to those Tenures but the Homage Dutie gratitude and necessary Attendance in War not only of those that held immediatly of the King but those that were the mediate Tenants and came also with the immediate the grand and mutual Tye betwixt the King and his people and the Regality Prerogative intrinsical and true worth and value of them when there should be any use of those necessary Defences of the King and his Kingdom in making a diversive War or succouring his Friends and Allies which are not seldom or were in more heroick times justly accounted to be as Outworks Ante Murales or Bulwarks of the Kingdom that the Rate which is now offered for those Tenures are but like a Tender or Offer to give the weight in Gold for an incomparable not to be got again and unvaluable Meddal or for Aarons Brest-Plate Moses rod or the Scepters of Princes if they could have been purchased at all and by weight It will be as unsafe as unusual to take money or Turn into a Rent that which in its first Institution and a happy long and right use which was made of it was only intended for a defence of the Kingdom when the King is not likely to be any â—aver by it and shall not gain 90000 l. per Annum his own Income by Licences of Alienation deducted for the clear Profit of the Court of Wards which the Lord Cottington when he was Master of that Court did but a year before the Troubles make as much by it besides the many great and royal Prerogatives which he shall lose to gain more mischiefs and Inconveniencyes to himself his People then at the present can be instanced or numbred The giving the King a Recompence by an yearly Rate amounting to one hundred thousand pounds per Annum to be charged upon all mens Lands Tenements and Hereditaments holden in Capite or Socage by Copy-hold Leases for Lives or Tenants at Will or for yeares will be against right Reason Justice and Equity as well as unwarranted by any hitherto Law or Custom of England to make 19 parts of 20 for so much if not more will probably be the odds that were not liable to Wardships or any imagined Inconveniences which might happen thereby not only to bear their proportionable part of the general Assessements for War but a share also in the burden of others where it could never be laid upon them and wherein they or the major part of them by more than two in three have no Lands in Fee simple Fee taile or by Leases for 100 years or any longer Term nor are never like to be purchasers of any Lands at all and if they had mony to do it are not likely to buy Inheritances if inheritances not Capite or Knight Service Lands when there is by more than 9 parts in 10 of Socage or Copy-hold Lands to be purchased were not nor are like to be in any danger of Wardships or under any fear or Apprehensions of it and render the Capite Land three or four years purchase dearer than it was wont to be and the Socage Lands three or four years purchase the cheaper only to free the Nobility Gentry and men of greatest Riches and Estates in the Kingdom which are subject to those small Burdens which are only said to be in Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service Or if laid upon the Moyety of the Excise upon Ale Beer Syder and Coffee c. or any other native or Inland Commodity will fall upon those that have no Land as well as those which have as upon Citizens Mechanicks Children
Seisins and Liveries and all other incidents belonging to the Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service be reserved and continued to the King and Mesne Lords and the Mariages of the Wards be put to a just apportionment and rate not to boxing or bidding with every pretender or such as shall be procured on purpose and was thought by the Sons of Rapine to be a parcel of godliness according to two years present value of the Estate and a moderate Rate or Rent for the Lands And if that they do not like to sue or be sued in that Court may do it either in the Exchequer or Chancery and try which of those Courts they shall like the better There being no Reason to be shown why Wardships Rents and Marriage Money should not be paid as quietly or without the Noise or Clamour of Oppressioon by some orderly Course to be taken in the collecting of it as the first Fruits of Arch-bishoppricks Bishoppricks and all the Clergyes Benefices which was at first derived from the Popes Usurpations and afterwards setled in the Crown or as the Tenths of all the Monasteryes and Religious Lands which by Act of Parliament were setled in the Crown for the Support and Maintenance thereof And now all the Lines are come in and meet in one Center we may aske the Days that are past and demand of the Sons of Novelty how it should happen or where the Invisible Cause or Reason lurketh that a People at least too many of them not long agoe covenanting whether his late Majesty would or no to preserve his Honor Rights and Iurisdâ—ctions and calling God to witness that they had no Intention to diminish them should presse or perswade the King to part with the vitals of his Regalitie or let out the blood thereof to take in water instead of it which that learned John Earl of Bristol who in his many Travails and Embassies to forrein Princes had observed the several Strengths Policyes and defects of Governments of all the Kings and Princes of Christendom could think no otherwise of that high and just Prerogative of Kings then that to discharge the Tenures in Capite would be consequently to discharge them of their Service to the Crown When as their can be neither Cause nor Reason to make any such Demands and that all the Lords of Mannors in England who may already find the Inconveniences of making too many small sized Freeholders and I wish the Kingdom may not feel it in the Elections of Parliament men and Knights of the Shire as well as it doth already by the Faction and Ignorance of such as choose Burgesses in Towns and Corporations who many times choose without eyes ears or understanding would not be well content to have the many perplexed and tedious Suits at Law betwixt them and their troublesome Tenants about Customs and Fines incertain which in every year do vex and trouble the Courts in Westminster Hall or that which the late feavorish Fancies of some would call Norman Slaveryes should be either a Cause that they must be forced or over intreated to part with their Copy-hold Estates Herryots Fines for Alienations and all other Incidents thereunto belonging or that it would be a good Bargain to have no Compensation or Recompence at all for them or no more than after the Rate of what might Communibus Annis one year with another be made of them Whenas to have the intended Recompence for the Court of Wards paid as is now proposed by a part of the Excise or Curses of the People or to have the poor bear the burden of the rich or those to bear the Burden of it which are not at all concerned in any such purchase or Alteration and will be an Act which can have no more Justice or Equity in it then that the payment of First-Fruits which is merely Ecclesiastical should be distributed and charged for ever upon the Layety and the other part of the People as well as the Clergy That the Tenths which the Layety and some of the Clergy do now contentedly pay should be communicated and laid upon all the Kingdom in general in a perpetuity That the draining or maintaining the Banks and Sluces and Misfortunes many times of the Fenns in Lincolnshire and other particular Places should be charged upon the Estaâ—es of all the men in England that could not be concerned either in profit losse or Dâ—nger Or that in the enclosing of Commons or in Deafforrestations the Commoners should have their Compensation paid by all men in City Town and Country for that which was not 〈…〉 nor was ever like to be any Gain or Aâ—vaâ—tage to them Or that the losses of Merchants by Shipwâ—acks Pirates or letters of Reprisal should be repaired and born by all the rest of the people that went no partnership or gain with them Or which way the people of England should think it to be for their good or safety that as it was in the dayes of Saul there should not be a Sword or Spear in Israel that the Lords of England whose great Auncestors helped to maintain all our Liberties being in Parliament in the 20 th year of King H. 3. pressed by the Bishops to Enact that Children born before Matrimony when their Parents after married should be legitimate answered Nolumus mutare Leges Angliae we will not change the Lawes of England should not take the overturning so many of the Fundamental Lawes and Liberties of the Kingdome to be the ruine or destruction of it to be of a greater concernment And that the King will not think it to be a most Christian as well as an Heroick answer of John King of France when he was a Prisoner in England to our King E. 3. and was denied his Liberty unless he would amongst other things doe Homage for the Realm of France and acknowledge to hold it of England That he must not speak to him of that which he neither ought nor would doe to Alienate a Right Inalienable that he was resolved at what price soever to leave it to his Children as he had received it from his Auncestors that affliction might well ingage his person but not the inviolable right of the Crown where he had the honour to be born over which neither Prison nor Death had any power and especially in him who should hold his life well employed sacrificing it for the Immortal preservation of France And that the people of England should not rather imitate the wisdome as well as goodness of the Elders of Israel when as Benhadad not content with Ahabs Homage had demanded unreasonable things of him Say unto the King hearken not unto him nor consent But remember that it was their fore-Fathers which in a Parliament of King E. 3. holden in the 42 th year of his raign declared that they could not assent to any thing in Parliament that tended to the disherison of the King and his Crown to which they were sworn
sint semper prompti parati ad servicium suum integrum explendum peragendum cum semper opus adfuerit secundum quod debent de â—eodis tenementis suis de jure facere Appointed and commanded that all Earls Barons Knights and their Servants should be ready with their Horse and Arms as they ought to do their Service which they owed and were to do for their Fees and Lands when need should require and was beneficial to the Vassal or Tenant CAP. II. The holding of Lands in Capite and by Knight Service is no Slavery or Bondage to the Tenant or Vassal FOr his lands were a sufficient recompence for the service which he performed for them and his Lord besides the lands which he gave the Tenant gave him also a protection and help in lieu of the service which he received from him For though as Bodin observeth vassallus dat fidem nec tamen accipit The Tenant makes fealty to his Lord but receiveth none from him there is betwixt them mutua fides et tuendae salutis et dignitatis utriusque obligatio contracta a mutual and reciprocal obligation to defend one another And when the Donee had lands freely conferred upon him and his Heires upon that consideration omnia feoda as well in Capite and Knights service tenure as Copy-hold and more inferior Tenures being at first ad arbitrium Domini no man can rightly suppose that he would refuse the reservation of Tenure and incidents unto it or imagine it to be a servitude or any thing else but an Act of extraordinary favour arising from the Donor which by the Civil Law and Customes of Nations chalenged such an hereditary gratitude and return of thankfulnesse as amongst many other priviledges thereupon accrued to the Donor if any of the Heires of the Lord of the Fee happened to fall into distresse the Heires of the Tenant though never so many ages and descents after were to releive them Domini utilitatem proferre et incommoda Propellere et si cum poterit non liberaverit eum a morte feudo sive beneficio suo privabitur such a Donee or Tenant was to advance the good of his Lord or Benefactor and hinder any damage might happen unto him and forfeit and be deprived of those lands if he did not when he could rescue him from death for Feudum ut habeat et Dominum non juvet rationis non est it is no reason that he should enjoy that land or benefit and not help or assist him which gave it and by our Law if such a Tenant ceased to do his service if not hindred by any legal impediment by the space of two years upon a Cessavit per Biennium brought by the Lord the land if no sufficient distresse was to be had was forfeited if he appeared not upon the distresse and paid the arreares And such Tenure carrying along with it an end and purpose in its original institution not only of preservation and defence of the Donor but of the Kingdome and protection also of the Tenant and the land which was bestowed upon him And being a voluntary and beneficial paction submitted unto by the Tennant insomuch as Feudum whether derived from the German word Feec or warre or a fide prestanda or a faedere inter utrosque contracto is not seldom in the Civil Law called beneficium may with reason enough be conceived to be cheerfully after undergone and approved of by the Tennants and their Heirs receiving many Privileges thereby as not payign any other aydes or Tallages besides the service which their Tenures enjoyned them w ch by a desuetude or necessity of the times is not now allowed them not to be excommunicated by the Pope or Clergy which H. 2. amongst other Laws and Customes observed in the time of his Grandfather H. 1. in the Parliament at Clarindon claimed as a special priviledge belonging to him and those which held of him in capite which in those days was worthily accounted amongst the greatest of exemptions and of creating like Tenures to be holden of themselves with services of War Wardship Marriage and other incidents to have their heirs in minority not only protected in their persons and estates which in tumultuous and unpeaceable Times was no small benefit but to be gently and vertuously educated in Bellicis artibus feats and actions of arms taught to ride the great horse and manage him and himself compleatly armed with Shield and Launce married without disparagement in his own or a better rank and quality his equitatura or Horse and Arms could not be taken in execution unless he dishonourably absented himself when his service was required and then all that he had was subject to execution saving one horse which was to be left him propter dignitatem militiae and have no usury which in those dayes especially until the reign of E. 1. By Jews and a sort of foreiners called Caursini was very oppressive and intollerable run upon them for their fathers Debts whilst they were in wardship Besides many other great priviledges belonging to Knights Gentry the original of many of whom was antiently by Arms and military service allowed them by our Laws of England as wel as by the Civil Law and Law of Nations as to bear Arms make Images and Statues of their Ancestors and by the Civil Law a preheminence that more credence should be given by a Judge to the oath of two Gentlemen produced as Witnesses then to a multitude of ungentle persons ought to be preferred to Offices before the ignoble in â—uâ—io enim presâ—mitur pro nobiliâ—ate ad efficia regenda and honoured in the attire and apparrel of their bodies as to wear Silks and purple colours and ex consâ—eâ—udine non suspenduntur sed decapitantur are not when they are to suffer death for offences criminal used to be hanged but beheaded with many other priviledges not here enumerated which our common people of England in their abundance of freedom have too much forgotten Were so much respected here in the raign of H. 2. saith the eminently learned Mr. Selden as one was fined one hundred pounds which in those days of more honesty and less mony was a great sum of mony for striking a Knight and another forty Marks because he was present when he was compelled to swear that he would not complain of the injury done unto him the grand Assize in a writ of right which is one of the highest Trials by Jury and Oath in the Law of England is to be chosen by Knights and out of Knights a Baron in a Jury for or against him may challenge the Pannel if one Knight at the least were not returned of the Jury if a Ribaud or Russian stroke a Knight without cause he was to loose the hand that struck him Kings have Knighted their eldest Sons and somtimes sent them to neighbour Kings to receive that Honour and Barons and Earls
shillings for a whole Knights Fee and after that rate proportionably ibm 35. If the Guardian maketh a Feoffement of the Wards Lands he shall have a Writ of Novel disseisin and upon recovery the Seisin shall be delivered to the next friend and the Guardian shall loose the Wardship 3. E. 1. ca. 47. Usurpation of a Church during the minority of the Heir shall not prejudice him 13 E. 1.5 Admeasurement of Dower shall be granted to a Guardian and the Heir shall not be barred by the suite of the Guardian if there be collusion 13 E. 1.7 Next Friends shall be permitted to sue if the Heir be â—loyned 13 E. 1.15 If part of the Lands be sold the services shall be apportioned Westmr. 3.2 Escheators shall commit no waste in Wards Lands 28 E. 1 18. If Lands without cause be seised by the Escheator the Issues and Mesne profits shall be restored 21 E. 1.19 where it is found by Inquest that Lands are not holden of the King the Escheator shall without delay return the possession Stat de Escheatoribus 29 E. 1. Escheators shall have sufficient in the places where they Minister to answer the King and his People if any shall complain 4 E 3.9.5 E. 3 4. Shall be chosen by the Chancelour Treasurer and chief Baron taking unto them the chief Justices of the one bench and the other if they be present and no Escheator shall tarry in his office above a year 14 E. 3.8 A Ward shall have an action of waste against his Guardian and Escheators shall make no waste in the Lands of the Kings wards 14 E. 3 13. Aid to make the Kings Son a Knight or to marry his Daughter shall be in no other manner then according to the Statute thereof formerly made 25 E. 3 11. Traverses of offices found before Escheators upon dyings seised or alienations without licence shall be tried in the Kings Bench 34 E. 3 14. An Escheator shall have no Pec of wood fish or venison out of the wards Lands 38 E. 3 13. An Idempnitate nominis shall be granted of another mans Lands seised by an Escheator 37 E 1.2 No Escheator shall be made unless he haue twenty pounds Land per annum or more in Fee and they shall execute their offices in proper person the Chancellor shall make Escheators without any Gift or Brokage and shall make them of the most lawful men and sufficient 12 R. 2.2 An Escheator or Commissioner shall take no Inquest but by such persons as shall be retorned by the Sheriff they shall retorn the offices found before them and the Lands shall be let to farm to him that tendereth a Traverse to the office 8 H. 6.16 Inquisitions shall be taken by Escheators in good Towns and open places and they shall not take above forty Shillings for finding an office under the penalty of forty pounds 23 H. 6 17. Women at the age of fourteen years at the time of the death of their Ancestors without question or difficulty shall have Livery of their Lands 39 H. 6.2 No office shall be retorned into any of the Kings Courts by any Escheator or Commissioner but which is found by a Jury and none to be an Escheator who hath not forty markes per annum above all reprises the Jurors to have Land of the yearly value of forty shillings within the Shire the Forman of the Jury shall keep the Counter part of the Inquisition and the Escheator must receive the Inquisition found by the Iury as also the offices or Inquisitions shall be received in the Chancery and Exchequer 1 H. 8 ca. 8. Lands shall be lâ—t to farme to him that offereth to traverse the office before the offices or Inquests retorned or within three Months after 1 H. 8 ca. 10. the respite of Homage of Lands not exceeding five pounds per Annum to be but eight pence the yearly value of Lands not exceeding twenty pounds per annum to be taken as it is found in the Inquisition except it by examination otherwise appear to the Master of the Wards Surveyer Atturney or Receiver General or three of them or that it shall otherwise appear and be declared in any of the Kings Courts No Escheator shall sit virtute officii where the Lands be five pounds per annum or above the Escheator shall take for finding of an office not exceeding five pounds per annum but six Shillings eight pence for his Fee and for the writing of the office three Shillings four pence for the charges of the Jury three Shillings and for the officers and Ministers of any Court that shall receive the same Record two shillings upon pain of five pounds to the Escheator for every time so offending the Master and Court shall have power to moderate any Fines or Recognisances 33 H 8.22 The Heir of Lands not exceeding five pounds per annum may sue his General Livery by warrant only out of the Court of wards although there be no Inquisition or office found or certified The Interest of every lesser Tenant for Term of years Copy-holder or other person having interest in any Lands found in any office or Inquisition shall be saved though they be not found by office The Heir upon an aetate probanda shall have an oustâ—e le maines and the profits of his Lands from the time that he comes to age and if any office be untruely found a Traverse shall be allowed or a Monstrans de Droit without being driven to any petition of right though the King be entitled by a double matter of Record A Traverse to an office shall be allowed where a wrong Tenure is found an ignoramus â—ound of a Tenure shall not be taken to be any Tenure in Capite and upon a Traverse a Scire facias shall be awarded against the Kings Patentee 2 and 3 E 6. ca. 8. And if there had been any certain or common grievances or so much as a likelyhood of any to have risen or happened by such Tenures and benefits which many were the better for and had no reason at all to find fault with w ch many more were striving to deserve of the Kings of England the Nobility great men of this Kingdom the Parliaments that have been ever since the 8 th year of the reign of H. 3. would not have made so many Acts of Parliament for their establishment or tending to their preservation if we should believe as it cannot be well denyed that Parliaments have been sometimes mistaken and enacted that which they have afterwards thought fit to repeal Yet it comes not within the virge or compass of any probability that Parliaments where all grievances are most commonly represented should for almost four hundred years together in a succession of many Kings Parliaments enact or continue grievances instead of remedies neither find those Tenures to be inconvenient or not fit to be continued or so much as complain of them but as if they were blessings of a
Debts or charge of Children connot rationally conclude or argue the Fines to be excessive no more than a common weight or burden which may easily be born or carried by any man in health doth make it to be of a greater weight or burden because another man by reason of sicknesse or other disabilities is not able to bear or stand under it or that a reasonable or small rent which Tenants are to pay to their Landlords is therefore too much or unreasonable because a poor or decayed Tenant cannot so well bear or pay it as he was wont or as one that is thriving or before hand might doe That all Leases of above One hundred years were made to draw Wardships contrary to Law when as such or the like Collusions were by the Statute of Marlebridge prohibited and the Parliament was mis-informed for long Leases under 500. years were not made by that Court lyable to Wardships and that undue proceedings were used in the finding of Offices to make Jurors find for the King which was but to adjorne or bind them over to the Bar of the Court of Wards in case that there was any doubt of the Law or Evidence Or when the Lords and Commons in Parliament the second day of June 1642. by the nineteen Propositions which were as they alleaged for the establishment of the Kings honour and safety and the wâ—lfare and â—ecurity of his Subjects and Dominions and being granted would be a necessary and effectual means to remove those jealousies and differences which have unhappily fallen betwixt him and his people and procure both his Majesty and them a constant course of honour peace and happiness Did propose petition and advise that the Lord high Constable of England Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper of the great Seal of England Lord Treasurer Lord privy Seal Earl Marshal Lord Admiral Warden of the Cinque Ports cheif Governour of Ireland Chancellor of the Exchequer Master of the Wards Secretaries of State two cheif Justices and cheif Baron may alwayes which shewed they had no desire for the present or the future to take away the Tenures in Capite and by Knight service be chosen by approbation of both Houses of Parliament Did not conceive them to be any Disease or Gangreen in the Body Politique at the making of the 2 d. Declaration of the Lords Commons in Parliament dated the 12 th of January 1642. Concerning the Commission of Array occasioned by a book then lately published Entituled his Majesties answer to the Declaration of both Houses of Parliament concerning the said Commission of Array Printed and Published by the care of Mr. Samuel Brown then and now a Member of the House of Commons wherein many Arguments being used and if they had been grievances would not have become the Parliament to have urged or pressed them as an argument against the Kings having power to raise men by his Commissions of Array and were then so little denyed to be for the necessary defence of the King and his Subjects as they were rather taken by that Parliament to be as the hands and Arms of the bodie politique worthy a continuance perpetuity and very well deserving the good opinion which the Parliament then had of them in the expressions following We deny that there is an impossibility of defence without such power viz. the Commissions of Array And affirm that the Kingdom may be defended in time of danger without issuing such Commissions or executing such power For we say that the Law hath provided several ways for provision of Arms and for defence of the Kingdom in time of danger without such Commissions 1. All the Tenures that are of his Majestie by Barony Grand Seâ—jeanty Knight service in Capite Knight service and other like Tenures were all originally instituted for the defence of the Kingdom in time of War and danger as appears by the Statute of 7 E. 1. of Mortmain which saith servitia quae ex hujus modi feodis dâ—bentur ad defensionem Regni ab initio provisa fuerunt vide Chart. H. 1. irrotulat in libro Rubro Scac. Coke Instit. 75. Bracton 36.37 Britton 162.35 H. 6.41 Coke 8.105 Coke 6. â— Instit. 1 part 103. These Tenures in the Conquerours time were many and since they are much increased and these are all bound to find men and arms according to their Tenures for the defence of the Kingdom 2. As those Tenures are for the defence of the Kingdom so the Law hath given to his Majestie diverse Priviledges and Prerogatives for the same end and purpose that with the profits of them he should defend himself and his people in times of danger of which his Majestie is and always hath been in actual possession since his accesse to the Crown For the defence of the Kingdom his Majestie haâ—h the profits oâ— Wardships Lâ—veries Primer seisins Marriages Reliefs Fines for Alienation Customs Mines Wrecks Treasure trove Escheats Forfeitures and diverse others the like casual profits That by these he may be enabled to defend the Kingdom and that he enjoying them his Subjects might enjoy their Estates under his Protection free from Taxes and Impositions for defence Therefore it is declared 14 E. 3. chap. 1. That all the profits arising of an aid then granted to the King by his people And of Wards Marriages Customes Escheats and other profits riseing of the Realm of England should â—e spent upon the safeguard of the Realm of England on the Wars in Scotland France and Gascoigne and no places elsewhere during the Wars And the Lords and Commons in Rich. 2 time knowing the Law to â—e so did as appears â—y the Parliament â—olls 6 Rich. â— m. 42 passe a â—etition that the King would live oâ— his own Revenues and that the Wards Marriages Reliefs Forâ—â—itures and other profits of the Crown might be kept to be spent in the Wars for the defence of the Kingdom 3. If the said Tenures and casual profits rising by his Prerogative will not serve for defence but more help is necessary by the fundamental Lawes and Constitutions of this Kingdom his Majestie is intrusted with a power to summon Parliaments as often as he pleases for defence of himself and his people when his ordinary Revenues will not serve the turn And there is no other legal way when the others are not sufficient but this and this last hath been ever found by experience the most sure and successefull way for supply in time of imminent danger for defence of the Kingdom and to this the Kings of this Realm have in times of danger frequently had recourse A main end why Parliaments are called is for defence of the Kingdom and that other Supplies thâ—n thâ—se before mentioned cannot be made without a Parliament Nor was there any publique or general damage so much as supposed to be in them the first of February 1642. when in the propositions sent by those Lords Commons which remain'd in Parliament
design to make all or most of the Actions of those our Kings and Princes and the Nobility and Clergy in their several reigns for at all of them like one of the Ephori sitting in Censure rather than Judgement upon the Spartan Kings and Government and the Acts of Parliament made in the several Reigns of those Kings he aimed and flung his Fancies clad in a sober Stile and Gravity rather than any Truth or Reason by pretending that they were made and contrived only under their influence to be arbitrary and oppressive to the freeborn people of this Nation for which he got several Preferments under Oliver the Protector of our burdens miseries Though if the Records and Journals of our Parliaments may be credited as certainly they ought to be before him most if not all of our Acts of Parliament were granted and assented unto by our Kings upon the Petitions of the Commons representing the people in Parliament as â—alsoms and great Remedies and redresses of all that they could complain of deliverances from the oppressions frauds and deceipts of one another and prevention of evils which might happen to them and their posterities wherein our Kings have almost in every Parliament given away many diminished very much of their own just legal Rights and prerogatives by granting and confirming their Liberties and Estates with such an infranchisement and freedom as no Nation or people under Heaven now enjoyes And when as heretofore in former Parliaments they gave to their Kings Princes many times too unwillingly any aydes or Subsidies were sure besides the blessings which accrewed to them by many good Laws and wholesome Acts of Parliament to gain a great deal more by their Acts of grace and general pardons only then the aids and Subsidies did amount unto Unlesse it were in the Reign of King H. 8. when the Abby Lands were granted unto him in the raign of King E 6. when the Chanterie remaining peices of those religious Lands were given to him wherein only the Founders and the religious to whom they properly belonged were the only loosers and yet by reason of King H. 8. his Endowments and erection of the Bishoppricks of Oxford Peterborough Chester Gloucester and Bristol the Colledge of Christ-Church in Oxford and the Deanary of Westminster Deanries and Prebends of Canterbury Winchester Worcester Chester Peterburgh Oxford Ely Gloucester Bristol Carlile Durham Rochester and Norwich and his large gifts and grants to divers of the Nobility who had formerly been the Founders or great Benefactors to many of the Abbyes and Prioryes and also to other of his people and the grants of E. 6. Queen Eliz. and King James considered very little of those Lands and Revenues doe at this time continue in the Crown And our many Acts of Parliament against Mortmaines without the Kings Licence Provisions by the Pope or any appeales to be made to him under the most severe penalties of Premunire the Act of Parliament taking away the Popes Supremacy the fineing and putting the Clergy of the Provinces of Canterbury and York under Premunires by King H. 8. An Oath of Renunciation of all fealty and appeales to the Pope an Engagement to observe all Lawes made against his Power the losse of 72 Mannors or Lordships out of the Revenues of the Arch-bishopprick of York and of sundry great Mannors and Possessions taken from the Sees of Canterbury Ely and London The demolishing and dissolution of Religious Houses 3845. Parochial Churches being more than a third part of all the Churches in England impropriated and gotten into the hands of the Laity many of the Vicarages confined to the small and pittiful maintenance of some 20 l. per Annum others 10 and some but 6 l. per An. several Acts of Parliament made in the reigns of several other Kings and Princes clipping the Clergies Power in making Leases or chargeing their Benefices with Cure restraining their taking of Farms forbidding Pluralityes intermedling as Commissioners in Lay or Temporal Affairs or to make Constitutions in their Synods or Convocations without the Kings Assent may declare how little power for some hundreds of years past the Clergy of England have before or since the Reformation either encroached upon or been able to get or keep Finds not in his mistaken Censures and Distortions of most of the Acts of our Kings and Parliaments to make way in the deluded peoples minds for the erecting of Olivers Protean and Tyranical Government Any fault with the erection of the Court of Wards and Liveries nor with Tenures or Wardships but justifying them sayes that the relief paid by the Tenant upon the death of his Ancestor was in memorial of the first Lords favour in giving him the Land and was first setled in the Saxons times that the Law of Wardship may seem more antiently seated in this Kingdom than the Normans times that Wardship was a fruit of the Service of the Tenant and for the defence of the Kingdom Which that Parliament or the following Conventions or Assemblies made no hast to overturn or take away until Oliver Cromwel that Hyaena or Wolf of the Evening having filled the Kingdom with Garrisons several Regiments of Horse and Foot amounting to 30000. men which were to be constantly maintained at the peoples charge to keep them quiet in their slavery had upon the humble petition and advice of that which he called his Parliament acknowledging with all thankfulness the wonderful mercies of God in delivering them from that Tyranny and Bondage both in their Spiritual and Civil Governments which the late King and his party which in a Fog or Mist of sin and delusion they were pleased most injuriously to averre and charge upon them designed by a bloody War to bring them under when as then they were under none and all but the gainers by the spoyles of those Wars have since had more Burdens Grievances and Taxes entailed upon them then ever was in any Nation in Christendome allowed him in a constant Revenue for support of the Government and the safety and defence of the Nations of England Scotland and Ireland a yearly Revenue of thirteen hundred thousand pounds whereof ten hundred thousand pounds for the Navy and Army which far exceeded thaâ— which accrewed to the Crown or Kings of England by Wardships Tenures and Ship-mony which were but casual and upon necessity and but at some times or seldome and alwayes less by more than eight parts in ten of those justly to be complained of awful and yearly Asessements Procured the Assembly or Parliament so called in Anno 1657. to awake that sleeping Ordinance and dresse it into an Act as he called it of Parliament wherein It was without any Cause or Grievance expresâ— or satisfaction given or promised to those that remained the loosers by it enacted that the Court of Wards and Liveries and all Wardships Primer seisins and Oustre le maines and all other charges incident and arising for
example of Magistracy put any grievance upon the people when as in the re-building of Ierusalem and to repell the Enemies and hinderers thereof there being as much necessity to defend a City or Commonwealth after it is built or established as it can be in the building framing or repairing of it he ordered the one half of the servants to work and the other to hold the Spears the shields Bows and Habergeons and every one of the builders had his Sword girded by his side and the Nobles were appointed when the Trumpeter should sound that stood by Nehemiah because they were separated one from another to resort thither unto him upon occasion of â—ight or danger and did after their work finished cause the Rulers of the people to dwell at Jerusalem and out of the rest of the people by lot to bring one of every Tribe to inhabit and dwell in there such as were valiant or mighty men of valour and had for overseers the principal and most eminent men and Zabdiel the Son of one of the mighty men David did not turn aside from God nor bind heavy burdens upon the people because he had mighty men about him and that Joshebbassebet the Tachmonite sate like a Constable or Marshal of England chief amongst the Captains nor did Solomon bruise the broken Reeds because he had many Princes and great Officers under him as Benajah the Son of Jehoiada who served his Father David and was Captain over his Guard was over the Host Azariah the Son of Nathan over the Officers like as in England a Lord great Chamberlain or Lord Chamberlain of the Kings Houshold Zabud the Son of Nathan Principal Officer and Aâ—ishar as a Treasurer or Comptrouler over the Houshold none of which could take it for any injury to enjoy those great Offices and places during the Kings pleasure but would have esteemed it to have been a greater favour if they had a grant for life and most of all and not to be complained of to have it to them and to their Heirs or after Generations for that all good things and blessings by a natural propension and custom amongst the Sons of men are very desireable to be continued and transmitted to posterity and the sacred Volumes have told us that it is a reward of wisdom and vertue to stand before Princes Nor was it any dishonour to the men of Judah and people of Israel that the Queen of Sheba wondring even to astonishment at the Attendance of Solomons Servants and Ministers and his Cup bearers or Butlers as the Margin reads it pronounced them happy that stood continually before him Or to the Subjects of Ahasuerus who reigned from India to Ethiopia over an hundred and seventeen Provinces that besides his seven Chamberlains or Officers of honour he had the seven Princes of Persia and Media which saw the Kings face and sate the first in the Kingdom Nor any to our heretofore happy Nation enjoying in a long Series and tract of time an envied peace and plenty under famous and glorious Kings and Princes that they did give Places Castles Mannors and Lands of great yearly values to certain great and well-deserving men and their Heirs to serve in great Imployments Solemnities and Managements of State-affairs to the honour of their Soveraigns and the good safety of the People in the Offices of great Chamberlain high Steward Constable or Marshal of England chief Butler of England and the like For when the guift of the Land it self was a great kindness it must needs be a greater to have an honourable Office Imployment annexed to it that an act of bounty done by a Prince in giving the Land should oblige the claim or receiving a far greater in the executing of that Office or Attendance which belonged to it And could have nothing of affinity to a burden when as besides the original guift of the Lands which were very considerable and to be valued many of those personal services by grand Serjeanty were not unprofitable or without the addition or accession of other Bounties and Priviledges as the guift to the Lord great Chamberlain of forty yards of Crimson Velvet for his Robes upon the Coronation day the Bed and furniture that the King lay in the night before the silver Bason and Ewer when he washed his hands with the Towels and Linnens c. The Earl Marshal to have the granting of the Marshals and Ushers in the Courts of Exchecquer and Common Pleas with many other guifts and Priviledges and Dymock who holds some of his Lands by the service of being the Kings Champion and to come upon the Coronation day into Westminster-Hall on Horse-back compleatly armed and defie or bid battel to any that shall deny him to be rightful King of England is to have the Kings best Horse and were not in the least any charge to the people or laid upon them as Cromwel did the stipends of his mock Lords or Officers of his imaginary Magnificence to be paid out of the publick Purse or Taxes as were the self created Lords of his Counsel who had 1000 l. per an for advising him how to fool the people build up himself by the wickedness of some and ruines of all the rest or as the Lord so called Pickering or Chamberlain of his Houshold and the quondam would be Lord Philip Jones who was called the Comptrouler of his Household had to buy them white staves to cause the people to make way and gape upon them No Prejudice to the Common-wealth that the Beauchamps Earls of Warwick did hold Land by right of inheritance to be Panterer at the Kings Coronation and to bear the 3 Sword before him the Duke of Lancaster before that Dutchy came again into the possession of the Kings of England to bear before him the sword called Curtana or the Earls of Derby as Kings of the Isle of Man to bear before the King at his Coronation the Sword called Lancaster which Henry the 4 th did wear when he returned from exile into England or for the Earl of Arundel to be chief Butler of England the day of the Coronation No disfranchisement to the City of London that some Citizens of London chosen forth by the City served in the Hall at the Kings Coronation assistants to the Lord chief Butler whilst the King sits at Dinner the day of his Coronation and when he enters into his Chamber after Dinner and calls for Wine the Lord Mayor of London is to bring him a Cup of Gold with Wine and have the Cup afterwards given to him together with the Cup that containes water to allay the Wine and that after the King hath drunck the said Lord Mayor and the Aldermen of London are to have their Table to Dine at on the left hand of the King in the Hall Or to the Barons of the Cinque Ports who claim are allowed to bear at the Kings Coronation a Canopy â—f cloth
to charge the Heir An Heir may now be disinherited by the frowardness of an aged Father Instigated by the cunning and practise of a Step-mother whereas a third part could not have before been conveyed or given from him In Socage Tenures there will be nothing for the defence and safety of his Majesties Kingdome Person and People when every man shall be holding his Plow or be supposed to hold by it but the moyety of the Excise of Ale and Beer to the value of one hundred thousand pounds per annum The Kingdom will upon occasion of war or invasion lose the ready defence and personal service of the Nobility who held per Baroniam or as Tenants in Capite and of many worthy and able men Knights Esquires Gentry and other sufficient Freeholders and men of good Estate and Reputation well educated and fitted for war and compleatly armed on Horse-back not like to be Run-aways or treacherous which hold the remainder and yet to be discovered Knights Fees or any part thereof in an ordinary course of defence for forty days service which in those times and after the manner and way of war and the Militia then used was time enough to determine all or a great part of the unhappy controversies of War by and out of so many several Estates than at twenty pounds per annum since improved to two or three hundred pounds per annum with not a few of their Tenants Friends Servants and Attendants going along with them and may call or summon them to go with· him out of the Kingdom in case of a diversive War or otherwise which by the Statutes of 1 E. 3.8 E. 3.25 E. 3. 4 H. 4. 17 Car. he cannot do to Hoblers Archers Footmen or the Train Bands but in case of necessity and suddain comming of Foreign Enemies into the Realm and would have been sure of a gallant Army of Horse which being the more active and ready part of an Army fittest for charge or retreat forage or traversing a Country is by the French whose Nobless in War are presently on Horse-back and make it their Ioy and subsistence to appear in the defence of their King and Country found to be a great part of the Successe in war as well as the Persians have done who hath many times overcome the Turk by the strength of Horse as the Hungarians and Poles have often done And the Germans and Italians did heretofore make great use of their Nobility in Wars and made their Armies to consist most of Horse for that they presumed quod in Equestri militia praevalerent nobiles that the Nobility would do best and prevail when they served on Horseback for as the great Estates of England were held by Knight Service so it was most performed on horseback and such as found or furnished out Horses in War were to be men of Gentility and value and did in person go with their Prince or their Lieutenant and until H. 5. Time Gentlemen which every high Constable and Mechanique now thinks it to be too little to usurp the Title of were not distinguished by any Title of addition but by their forinsecum servitium which was Knight Service and in Kent where they claimed Gavelkind were never put under that kind of partition It must needs be very prejudicial to the King who is to protect his people and to his people who are to be protected by him when as the King that hath none or very few Inland Castles Citadels or places of strength as Holland Flanders France Italy Germany most Nations have to retard the March of an Enemy landed untill he can summon or call together his Subjects and Forces and cannot at once or upon a suddain be able to raise so many men as may be able to incounter or vanquish him in the Field Shall have no Legions or standing parts of an Army as Oliver and his Son Richard had paid at the charge of the publique to rally and unite at pleasure redresse Rebellions Repel and Oppose an Enemy and if need be visit him at home and make his Country rather than his own Sedem Belli the Stage of War to indure the Spoyles Plundrings Insolencies and free quartering of Souldiers But shall when the Floods shall rore and lift up their voice his Enemies compasse him in on every side and there be none to help him be as a Prince disarmed and left to intreat and expect the good will of his people or the care which they will be pleased to take for themselves in the first place for him at leasure hoping that they will not devide into parties of factions call or summon a Parliament which will take up forty days or six weeks and give the Enemy all that while the mastery of the field and time enough to make up all his advantages and in the mean time must not so much as require aid of them who have had their lands freely given them or of those who hold Offices or Annuities under him for the performance of their Homages Oaths Fealties Contracts Promises and grateful acknowledgments and when the Parliament are met must tarry until the majority of opinions shall agree how and in what manner he shall be helped which will not if it should be agreed upon the second or third day but useth not to be in so many weeks be speedily furnished when the mony must be first raised which in the late necessity of disbanding and paying of Souldiers could not be finished in two or three months and the men after leavied armed and cloathed which where the Enemy shall in the mean time have gained some Forts Passages or Counties will not be so ready a way or help at hand as the use of Tenures in Capite which like so many Garrisons invisibly dispersed but no way oppressing their several Neighbourhoods are upon the score of gratitude as well as loyalty quickly called out and imbodied which made the Kingdom have the lesse use of Forts Castles to be able in the Raign of King Stephen by agreement betwixt him and Henry the second to demolish at once 1150 Castles Will loose also his Homage of his Tenants in Capite and by Knight service being the Seminary and root of the Oath of Allegiance and the Genus or original of Fealty which saith Sir Edward Coke is a part of Homage and is so much saith Sir Henry Spelman a part of Homage as a release of Fealty is a discharge of Homage which the Oaths of Allegiance and Fealty the duty of them being now by the delusions of Satan too much disused and strangely Metamorphosed into factions will though the Oaths of Allegiance and Fealty should faile remain fixed and radicated in the Tenures of Lands in Capite and by Knight Service and when they concurre do altogether if rightly observed make a threefold Cord which will not easyly be broken and were therefore by as careful as wise Antiquity
by the Family of the Dymocks in Lincolnshire and very many others holding by divers other grand Serjeanties Prejudice the Families of Cornwal Hilton and Venables who though not priviledged and allowed to sit as Peers in Parliament are by an antient custome and prescription allowed to use the Title of Baron of Burford Baron Hilton and Baron of Kinderton because they hold their Lands per Baronâ—am Disparage the Esquires and Gentry of England the first sort of which being as antiently as the dayes of the Emperour Julian called Scutarii of their bearing of shields in the Wars and the other as our excellently learned Mr. Selden teacheth us called Gentlemen a gente or the stock out of which they were derived or because they were ex origine gentis of noble kind distinguished from them whom Horace termeth sine gente or that they had servile Auncestors had by their fears and prowess in War not only gained great reputation but Lands given to them and their Heirs for their reward support and maintenance from which custome and usage amongst the Romaâ—s saâ—th Pasquier the French in imitation of the Gaules did call those Esquires Genâ—â—â—men Quilz viâ—â—ent estre pourvâ—uz de tels benefices whom they did see so provided with those benefices or rewards Et pour autant quilz veterent ceux cy n' estre chargez d' aucune redevance pecuâ—iare à raison de leurs terres benificiales envers le Prince et outre plus qu'a l' occasion d'icelles ils devoient prendre les armes pour la protection et dâ—ffense de Royaume le peuple commenca de fonder le seul et unique degrè de noblesse sur telle maniere de gens â—or that they did see that they were not charged with any Assessement in money to the Prince by reason of the Tenures of their Lands and that therefore they were upon all occasions to take Armes for the protection and defence of the Realm the people took them to be a degree of Nobility as appeareth by the stature of 1 E. 2. touching such as ought to be Knights and came not to receive that order Take away a great part of the root and foundation of the Equestris ordo and antient and honourable degree of Knighthood in England which was derived and took its beginning from the service of their Lands which were military for the cheif Gentlemen or Free-holdes of every County in regard they usually held by Knights service saith the learned Selden were called Chivalers in the statute of W. 1. touching Coroners and was so honourable a Title as the name of Chivaler was antiently given to every temporal Baron whether he were dubbed a Knight or no. Blast and enernate that also of our not long agoe instituted order of Baronetts which are though there be no Tenure expressed in their Patents held by service in War and a more noble Tenure then Socage Take away the cause and original of that antiently very eminent degree of Banneret when as such as hold Lands in Capite and by Knight service and had many Tenants also holding of them by Knight service were able in a more then ordinary manner to do their King and Country service by bringing their own Banner in the Feild which was to be displaced by the King or his Leivetenant Make our heretofore famous English Nation in matters of Armes and feats of Chivalry to be as a Pastoritium or agreste genus hominum to be Rusticks and Plowmen which the followers of Romulus which were many of them but Rubulâ—i et opiliones Sheppheards and Heardsmen did not take to be a degree worthy the Founders of that great Empire of Rome nor could be content with any lesâ— then that of their Patricij or Equites Senaâ—ors or Knights And was therefore called Feudum nâ—bile et cognoscitur mulâ—is privilegiis inhaerentibus viz. Gardia Fidelitas Homagium Curia Consuetudinâ—s Jurisdictio in Vassallos Banni et retrobannâ— privilegium jus Columbarij jus molendini c. A noble Fee which hath many priviledges belonging to it viz. Wardship Fealty Homage a Court Customes Jurisdiction over Tenants priviledge of Ban and Arriere Ban calling them to War in defence of their Prince a right to have a Dove-house and a Mill the two latter of which others could not heretofore build or enjoy without the Kings licence Equibus liquet ingentem maneriorum nostrorum multitudinem Normannis enim abunde auctam videmus ex privilegiis ad feuda militaria olim spectantibus originem sumpsisse by which it is manifest that our great number of Mannors came to be abundantly increased by the Normans and took their begining from the priviledges belonging to Knights Fees Take away all the Mannors and Court Barons of the Kingdome which being before the statute of Quia emptores terrarum created by the Lords who parcelled out the Lands which the King had before given them to several Friends or Tenants to be held of them and their Heirs by Knight service and some other part in Socage to plow their Lands and carry their Hay c. and to do suit to the Courts of which the Free-holders are said to be the Homage holden for their Mannor in whose Jurisdiction the Lands do lye and are no small part of the legal and necessary priviledges and power of the Gentry or Lords of Mannors over their Tenants which were as Sr. Edward Coke saith given them for the defence of the Kingdome and doe not only very much conduce to the well ordering of their Tenants but to the universal peace and welfare of the Nation in their inferior Orbes and Motions subordinate to the higher Were all at the first derived out of Knight service as evidently appears by Edward the Confessors Laws wherein it was ordained that Barones qui suam habent Curiam de suis hominibus which have their Court consisting of their men and Tenants Et qui Sacham et Socam habent id est Curiam et Jurisdictionem super Vassallis suis have a Court and Jurisdiction over their Tenants are to doe right to their Tenants and by the fall of those many thousand Mannors Court Barons in the Kingdoms which will at the same time dye and perish with the Tenures in Capite and by Knight service Extinguish the Copyhold Estates which belong unto them which by the destruction of the Mannors and Court Barons will also fall for as there can be no Court Baron without Freeholders so no customary Court without Copiholders And once lost or but altered cannot be created again for that now a Subject cannot make a Mannor which must be part in demesnes and part in services to hold of him by services and Suit of Court which is to be by a long continuance of time a tempore cujus contrarij memoria hominum non existit and if there be no Court the Customary Tenants or Copiholders cannot enter their Plaints make Surrenders
worthily reckoned to be honoris species exercitium nobile proprium nobilium a degree or part of honor a noble exercise and proper breeding for Nobility hinc militum nomen in Jure feudali pro nobili usurpatur and thence a Knight was in the feudal Laws taken and used for a Nobleman and though Hector Boethius calleth equites Barons speaking of those that paid for Wardship and releifs to Malcolme the King of Scots yet Sir Henry Spelman is cleerly of opinion that Miles quem ea tempestate Baronem vocabant non a militari cingulo quo equites creabantur sed a militari feudo quo alâ—â—s possessor libere tenens nuncupatus est nomen sumpsit that a Knight which in those â—imes they called a Baron was not so called from the Military Belt or Girdle by which they were created but took his title or denomination from the Knights Fee of which he was otherwise caâ—led Possessor or free Tenant had jus Annulorum amongst the Romans a right to wear Rings and was gradus ad Senatorium a step or means to be a Senator For Nobilium Ordo pro seminario munerum praecipuorum habetur quia liberaliter educati sapientiores esse censentur saith Besoldus the degree of Nobilitie hath been accompted to be the foundation or original of the greatest Offices or places for that being liberally and more then ordinaryly educated they were judged to be the wisest and therefore Comites or Earls being antiently in the reign of the Emperour Charlemain which was in anno Christi 806. if not long before praefecti Provinciarum qui Provincias Administrabant the Governours of Countries and Provinces under their Emperours and Kings were with Dukes also and Barons not only in France in those times but in Germany also afterwards inserted or put into the Matricula or Roll of the States of the Empire in Comitijs jus suffragij habuerunt and had voice or judicature in their Dyets or greatest Assemblies which corresponds with that more antient Custom amongst the Hebrewes in Gods once peculiar Commonwealth where the Princes of the twelve Tribes summo Magistratui in consilijs assidebant did assist the chief Magistrate in their great Counsels and Arumaeus as well as many other is of opinion that it was libertatis pars a great part of the peoples Liberties foâ— their good that deliberatio oâ—dinum consiliâ— authoritate quorum periculo res agitur suscipitur qui apud Principem in mâ—gna gâ—â—cia suâ—â— in those great Counsels Resolves should be made by those who should be inâ—â—ressed or pertakers in any dangers or misfortunes which should happen thereupon jure Comitiorum una perpetua privativa est mediata subjectio qua qui infectus est nec Comitiorum particeps esse potest That it is a Rule or Law in such Assemblies that those that sit there or have voice and suffrage in it are to hold immediately of the Empire and the Reasons of the first Institution of the Parliament of France composed of the Nobility by the antient Kings of France and King Pepin was as Pasquier that learned Advocate of France observeth in partem solicitudinis to assist their Kings for the better management of the Affairs of Government who did thereby communicate les Affaires publiques a leurs premiers et grandes seigneurs come si avec la monarchie ils eussent voulu entre mesler l'ordre d'vne Aristocratie et Governement de plusiâ—urs personnages d'honneâ—r the publique affairs to their chief and greatest Lords to the end to intermingle and blend with Monarchy the order and manner of an Aristocratie and Government by many personages of Honour et ne se mettre en hain des grandâ—s Seigneurs Potentats and not to draw upon them the envy of their great and mighty men Et â—estans les grands Seigneurs â—insi loâ—s unis se composa un corps general de toutes les Princes et Governeurs par l' advis desquels se viudereient non seulement les differents qui se presenteroient entre le Roy et eux mais entre le Roy et ses Subjects And the great Lords being so united composed and made one general body of all the princes and Governours of Provinces by whose advice and council not only the differences which should happen betwixt the King and them but between the King and his Subjects might be determined Et estoit l' usance de nos anciens Roys telle qu' es lieux ou la necessite les sumomioit se uvidojent ordinairement les affaires par assemblees generales des Barons and it was the usage of the antient French Kings in all cases of necessity most commonly to consult of their affairs in the general Assemblies of their Barons and accordingly by the directions of reason or of that and the more antient Governments amongst the Greekes in their great Council of Amphiction or of the Romans in their Senate our Saxon Kings did in Anno 712. which was almost one hundred years before the raign of the Emperour Charlemâ—in call to their Assemblies and great Councels for the enacting of Laws and redressing of Griveances their regni Scientissimos et Aldermannos Aldermen Earls or Governours of Provinces the wisest most knowing of the Kingdome thereâ—ore after the Conquest King John did at the request of the Barons not to call to his Parliaments the Barones minores the men of lesser estates which hoâ—d also in Capite promise under his great Seal Ut Archiepiscopos Abbares Comites et majores Barones Angliae sigillatem per literas summoniri faceret that he would severally summon to Parliaments the Arch-Bishops Abbotts Earls and greater Barons of England and that the lesser Barons were summoned or sat in Parliament falsum esse ipsa ratio suadet saith the no less Judicious than Learned Sr. Henry Spelman reason it self will not allow for a Truth when as there was as he observeth ingens multitudo a great number et plus minus 30000 quos nullo tecto convocari poterat and no less then 30000 which no one house was able to contain Quemadmodum itaque saith he nequâ— Barones ipsi consiliavè majores neque minores quempiam in Curiis suis ad Judicia ferenda de rebus sui Dominij admittant nisi Vassallos suos qui de ipsis immediate tenent hoc est milites suos et tenentes libere ita in summa Curia totius Regni nulli olim ad Judicia et Consilia administranda personaliter accersendi erant· nisi qui proximi essent a Rege ipsique arctioris fidei homagii vinculo conjuncti hoc est immediate vassalli sui As therefore neither the greater nor lesser Barons do admit any in their Courts to advise them or meddle with matters of Judicature concerning things belonging to their Estate or Jurisdiction but their Tenants and such as hold immediately of
three Knights Fees to be performed in the said Army for the Earldom of Essex which shews also that then those Antient Earldoms of England were no other then by Tenure and Feudal by John de Ferrers Henry de Bohun and Gilbert de Lindsey Knights And in the same Constables Roll and at the same time Walter de Langton Bishop of Câ—ventry and Liâ—chfield recognovit et offert Servitium duorum Feudorum militum pro Baronia sua faciendum per dominos Robertum Peverel et Robertum de Watervile milites acknowledged and offered the service of two Knights Fees to be performed for his Baronie by Sir Robert Peverel and Sir Robert Watervile Knights Mr. Selden is aâ—so of opinion that to hold of the King in Capite to have Possessions as a Barony to be a Baron and sit with the rest of the Barons in Parliament are according to the Laws of those Times Synonimies And upon this and no other ground or foundation is built that as noble and illustrious as it is antient Pairage of the 12 pairs of France all of whom even the Earldom of Flanders now in the hands of the King of Spain do hold in Capite or Soveraignty of the French King and that great and eminent Electoral Colledge in Germany and the mighty Princes thereof are no other than Tenants in Capite and holding their vast Terrytories of the Empire by grand Serjeanry and have feuda antiqua concessa acquisita generi familiae connexam habentes Principatibus et Territoriis suis dignitatem Electoralem and have an antient Fee or Territory granted and acquired to their Issue and Family and a dignity Electoral annexed to their Principalityes and Territoryes And it cannot with any reason or Authority be said or beleived that the late Charles King of Sweden could by the Treaty or Pacification at Munster have been made a Prince of the Empire or have had place or voice in their Diets if he had not had the Bishopprick of Breme and other Lands and Provinces as Fiefs of the Empire in his Possession to have made him a member thereof and that the Prince Elector Palatine who by reason of that Territory justly claimeth the Vicariat of the Empire had never been made the eighth Elector if he had not had part of the Palatinate which he now enjoys For certainly if the care and wisdom of our Progenitors or Ancestors could not think it fitting to compose that high Court of Judicature of Strangers or grant them an Inheritance in it which had no Lands or Possessions to make them a concernment and to be more careful of the good of the Kingdom as Oliver or Dick of the Addresses would have done their Mungrel Scotch that had no Lands at all in England but a stock of Knavery but would rather bring in such as had the best Estates and holden by the most noble and serviceable Tenures in order to the defence of their King and Country and were the most honourable wise and understanding then such as had been Servants or of a low extraction race of mankind by their folly and whimsies had not long agoe tossed and tumbled about poor England like a Foot-Ball which may call to our remembrance that opinion or a lage of the Antients that Jupiter subdâ—xit servis dimidium mentis that God would not allow â—ervants or men litle better or rudely and ignorantly educated any more then to be half witted some of our late Levellers at the same time making a difference betwixt the antient great Estates of the Peers and Barons of England and that lesser which they now enjoy to be an objection against the House of Peers in Parliament for that now as they mistakenly surmised they could not as formerly be a banck or ballance betwixt the King and the people And howsoever that the temporal Barons as well those which were since the middle of the reign oâ— R. 2. created by Patent to be unum Baronum Angliae as in Sir John Beauchamps Patent to be Baron of Holt or as many later to have loâ—um voâ—em et sedem in Parliamento to have voice and place in the Parliament as those that hold per Baroniam and that those that hold per Baroniam and were Barons by Tenure do not come to Parliament but when they are summoned by the Kings Writ as the Bishops also do not and as in the Earl of Bristols Case was adjudged in the late Kings time are to have their Writs of Summons ex debito justitiae as of right due unto them yet a first second or third Summons which is only and properly to give notice when and where the Parliament beginneth cannot as Mr. William Prynne hath learnedly proved any way make or intitle any man which shall be so summoned to be a Peer or Baron that is not a Baron by prescription or was not created nor doth that Clause in the Patents of Creation doe or operate any more then that such new created Barons who are also Tenants in Capite and as all the other Barons doe ought to do their Homage shall be one of the Barons in Parliament have voyce and place there deny that they that sit there by Tenure and per Baroniam doe not sit there and enjoy their Honors and Dignities as Tenants in Capite and per Baroniam or that those that come in by patent amongst them doe enjoy their places as incorporated and admitted amongst them and not as Tenants in Capite and being added to them do help to continue the Society or Court though they be not of one and the same Original or Constitution as Prebâ—nd added â—o a Cathedral Church may make them to be of the old Constitution but takes it not away and as the grant of King H. 8. to the Abbot of Tavestock quod sit unus de Spiritualibus et Religiosis dominis Parliamenti could not have altered his former and better condition if he had held any Lands per Baroniam And though the Creations by Patents may well enough sustain the priviledges of those that sit and were introduced by it yet the greater number or as many of the Earls and Barons as hold per Baroniam such as the Earls of Arundel and Oxford Lords Berkley Mowbray Abergaveny Fitz walter Audley De la ware and that great number which were before R. 2. and were not created by letters Patents and had not the Clause of locum vocem et sedem in Parliamento will lose their Peerage and right of sitting in Parliament if the other doe not when as their Patents giving them sedem vocem et locum in Parliamento doe but entitle them to be of that House whereof the other Earls and Barons were and to be but as the former Barons were which hold per Baroniam and in Capite As if a Lord of a Mannor could create a man to be one of his Coppy-holders he should be no otherwise then as a
Coppy-holder of that Mannor and those Patent Lords doe by their Patents hold their Honor and Dignities in Capite though it be not expressed in their Paâ—ents and should pay as great a Releif as the other Earls and Barons doe by Tenure for no man can sit there but as a Tenant in Capite and acknowledging his Soveraign unless a Coordination should be supposed and that dangerous Doctrine again incouraged nor can these by Creation sit if the House should be dissolved by the change of the others Tenures for that they were but Adjuncts and Associates of them Which was so well understood by Sir Edw. Coke to be a shaking if not an over-turning of the foundation of that high and most honourable Court or Judicatorie as in the Parliament of the 18 â—h year of King James in the proposition which was then on foot to change the Tenures in Capite and by Knight service into free and common Socage he and some of the old Parliament men advised a Proviso to be inserted in that intended Act of Parliament that the Bishops notwithstanding that their Baronies should be holden in Socage should continue Lords of Parliament and in our late times in that great inundation of mistaken Liberty when the outrage of the vulgar and common people greedily pursued the dictates of their ignorance and fancie and that after the House of Lords had been shut up and voted to be uselesse and dangerous the persons of the Barons of England which the Law and the reasonable and antient as well as modern Customes of England did never allow to be arrested were arrested and haled to Prison In the seeking a remedy wherof some of the Baronage pleading their Priviledge it was in Easter Term 1650. in the Kings or upper Bench in the argument of the Countess of Rivers Case argued and urged that all Tenures as well as the House of Lords were taken away so that the Court holding that the Priviledge was not allowable for that she never had reference to the Parliament or to do any publique service the Cause was adjourned Wherefore seeing that the custom of a Court is the Law of a Court and the interrupton of a Custom Prescription or Franchise very dangerous and Cessante causa tollitur effectus the cause or foundation taken away the effect or building faileth that a Lord of a Mannor is not able to create a Mannor or make a Lease-holder or Tenant of one Mannor to enjoy the same priviledges which he did formerly be incorporate a Tenant in another Mannor a House with a Common Appendent or which was before belonging unto it once pulled down though built up again looseth its Common and Prescription or if a Coppy-hold estate come to the Lord by Forfeiture Escheat or otherwise if he make a Lease or otherwise it is no more grantable by Copy of Court Roll or make a Feoffment upon condition and after enter for the Condition broken it shall not be regranted by Copy And if a man hath libertyes by Prescription take letters Patents of them the matter of the Record drowns or takes away the prescription as was held in 33 H. 8. tit precription Br. 102. c. Or if as in the Acts of Parliament for the dissolution of the Monasteries the King shall be before the Tenures be ordained to be in free and common Soccage made or derived to be in the actual Seâ—sin and Possession of all the Lands There will be cause and reason enough to make a stand or a pause and inquire further into it For if the subversion of Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service will not totally or at once ruine and dissolve the House of Peers in Parliament or put upon it a new constitution it will not be good certainly to leave that House and most high and Honourable Court and all its just Rights and Privileges which hath already so much suffered by the Assaults and Batteries of Faction and vulgar Frenzies to an after question of moote point whether or no it be not dissolved or put upon a new Foundation And must needs be very dangerous when as one of the three Estates under the King which is Supream and not Coordinate viz. the Bishops and Lords Spiritual being lopt off the second which is the Lords Temporal shall be but either suspected or doubted to have a being and the third which is the House of Commons shall upâ—â— the next advantage or distemper of that paâ—â—y which lately gained so much by â— supposing it to be the Soveraign bâ—â—ancied â—o be above both it and the King who as the head is above them both and too much gratifie that late illegal and unwaâ—rentable opinion and practice of the Soveraignty of the House of Commons in Parliament or that they alone are the Parliament of England Destroy the hopes and rights of the Bishops being the third Estate in Parliament of ever being restored or admitted again into it from which after a force and a protestaâ—ion solemnly made against it twelve of them imprisoned for making of it they were by an Act of Parliament in an 17. Car. Regis primi prohibiting them as well as all other Clergy men to intermeddle in any temporal affairs or proceedings excluded the House had all their Estates afterwards by an Ordinance of the Lords and Commons without being cited or heard and without the Kings consent and after his going from the Parliament and in the midst of a War and Hostilities betwixt them confiscated and taken from them by the taking away of Tenures per Baroniam being the only cause and reason of their sitting there and constituting them a third Estate will now after his Majesties happy restoration when the waves and rage of the people are so calmed and ceased as the Halcyon is preparing to build her nest be more then ever made to be altogether impossible Hinder and restrain our Princes from recovery of Foreign Rights a necessary inlarging their Dominions making an offensive War or pursuing a flying or like to be recruited Enemy which in keeping a Kingdom in peace and plenty or maintaining the Commerce thereof will be according to the rules of policy and good Government as necessary as that of Davids revenging upon the Ammonites the affronts done to his Embassadors the Wars of our Edward the third or H. 5. in France of the great Gustavus King of Sweden in Germany or the now King of Denmarks and Marquesse of Brandenburghes Wars upon Charles late King of Sweden And when any of those occasions or necessities shall offer themselves or inforce a forinsecum serviciuâ— or service in foreign wars shall have none but Auxiliaries Hirelings to go along with them when as several Acts of Parliament do prohibit the enforcing Hoblers which were a kind of light horsemen Archers Trained Bands and common Souldiers to go out of their Countries unlesse it be in cases of necessity which the common people know not
how to judge of and the little Parliament so called in the beginning of the year 1640. upon the invasion of an Army of â—actiâ—us Scots and a letter produced by the King that they had written for aid to the French Kâ—ng did not rightly apprehend for it is not to be doubted but that the cheerful and ready aids upon all occasions given to the Kings of England by the Tenants in Capitâ— and Knight Service and the Nobility and Gentry and their Tenants Friendâ— and Followers taking Arms and foâ—lowing the Royal Standard was a great cause â—f their Conquests in France and Warlike atchivement in that and other parts of the World often beating back the incursions of the Scotch and Welch and deâ—ending the borders The taking away of thâ— Knights Fees or Tenures by Knight Service from the Nobility and Gentry without any Recompence if they would be content to part with them or to accept it Will be an Act of great Injustice Regula quippe feudalis et firma est quod Dominus nec in totum nec pro parte minuere adimereve Jus vassallo quesitum possit sine culpa eoque non convicto for it is a fixed and constant Rule in the Feudal Law That the Lord cannot neither in the whole nor in part without a forfeiture or conviction of his Tenant diminish or take away the Vassals Right and it would be against Right Reason and Equity not to give a Recompence in Caâ—se of pulling down or fireing a House in a Necessity of War to prevent an Enemy but much more against it and our Magna Charta in Case of no Necessity to Sacrifice without a just Recompence given for it the Estates and Rights of some to pacifie the Fears of others and disturb and incumber the Estates of all or a great many to free the Estates of a few which would be aâ— unjust as for the Lords of Mannors to make By-laws forbidding the Services of their Tenants and without any forfeitures or convictions grant or sell away their Lands or Copy-hold Inheritances to Strangers or dedicate the Profits thereof to the publick wherein the owners or Proprietors shall get none or very little share in it or such as will be impreceptible and appeared to be so much against Law and Reason as when in the dissolution of the Abbyes and Monasteryes the Nobility and great men who had been Founders of many of them or given a great part of the Lands thereof were to be the losers of that which should have reverted or come unto them if they could not consist with the first Intentions King H. 8. did take a care to gratifie many of them with great quantityes and Portions thereof and to some granted intire Priories and Nunneries of their Ancestors founding as to John Earl of Oxford the Priory of Colne and Nunery of Hedingham in Essex and the like to many others which might be here remembred The Publique Faith which was wont to have so much care taken of it when she borrowed money to make our unhappy warres and Contentions of so much of the Nation as hold by the Tenures in Capite and Knight Service and of all the other parts of the people who by Oaths of Supremacy Protestations and Covenant were not to prejudice the King nor by their Covenant any other in their Rights and Liberties will now be broken which when Livy a Heathen Writer and one that very well understood affairs of State upon the making of a Law at Rome to pacify a mutiny that the Prisoners for Debt should not be bound or fettered as the manner then was could say that Ingens vinculum fidei a great Obligation or Bond of Faith amongst men was that day broken he would have without doubt said more were he now aâ—ive as to our breach of Faith amongst men but a great deal more if he had been Christian as to God Almighty Take away not only the Honor but the publick Benefits of those Tenures and feudal Rights which are so highly and justly esteemed in all other Kingdoms and Principalityes which are so happy as to live under Monarchy the best of Governments as they can give them no other Character then that Jura Regnorum Ducatuum Marchionatuum adeoque totius Imperij Leges Fundamentalâ—s ac nervi quibus Monarchiae Romanae cum ipso senescente mundo languescentis lutei pedes colligantur inâ—iis continentur Therein are contained the Laws and Rights of Kingdoms Dukedoms Maâ—quisates the Fundamental Laws of the Empire and the Nerves and Sinews by which the Empire languishing in the old age of the world hath been sustained And that Feuda Feudorumque Jura â—â—delitatem â—idem publicaâ—â— pacem incolumnatem Communis Patriae firmant â—irmissimum Militiae contra Communes Reipublicae hostes neâ—vum ac praesidium suâ—ministrat adeoque fulcâ—a Germanico Romani Imperi◠〈◊〉 desiderant Feuds and the Rights thâ—â—â—of do six and consolidate the Fidelity publique Faith Peace and wellfare of the Common-wealth and administreth the greatest help and strength in war against the Common Enemy and is worthy to be called the Prop of the German and Roman Empire Make our Nobility and Gentry who have by their Chivalry and high Attempts by Sea and Land rendred them second to none and published the Fame and Glory of their Actions as far and farther than ever the Roman Eagles flew to be like the Roturiers or Paysants oâ— France and a reproach or hissing to all Natioas or like Davids Embassadors when the Children of Ammon had misused them and shaved the one half of their Beards and cut off their Garments in the middle even to their Buttocks and to be put behind all but the Dutch and Switzers the former of which do Trade under Taxes Excise the latter are but the Mercenaries and Hirelings of the French and Spanish Kings in their Wars and Hostilities and ranâ—king us with them and those little and despicable Commonwealths of Luca and Geneva cast us into the Giddy and at last woeful Presidents and Consequences of the unquiet headed Argentinians Lindorians Citizens of Siena Genoa and Florence who by ruining and rooting up the Nobility and Gentry and making three rancks and degrees of their Citizens some great some mean and the rest of the vulgar the two last putting out the first cast themselves into a Circle of blood and misery out of which nothing but their former Government was able to refcue them Occasion the losse and ruine of purchasers and Mony-lenders enlarge their complaints of double treble Feoffments Mortgages which by the disuse of the Court of Wards and finding of Offices after the death of Tenants in Capite and by Knight Service have been more than formerly and wherein some of our late Reformers were known more to have exercised their wits than their Consciences conceal'd Dormant and fraudulent Assurances carried in the Pockets of some to pick the Pockets of others which by reason of the
Servants and the like and heaviest uâ—on the poorer sort of people and be a burden which the lowly Cobler and reverend Applewomen the Botcher and Stockingmenders in their pittiful subterraneous Tenements and the poor Women which in the Streets do cry Fruits and Fish by a double retail and pay twelve pence a week for the loan of twenty shillings and pawn a Petticoat for security the Chimney Sweepers Brooom-men and Beggars cannot escape Will be no good way of raising mony nor an Honourable Revenue and though it might become the Dutch in their grand necessities of War where they have but few Gentlemen will not be for the honor of England and the Nobility and Gentry of England to have their provisions of War and Defence arise out of so low a businesse as Aâ—e and Beer and make the Brewers and Ale-house-keepers to be as it were the Tenants in Capite and to supply the Knight Service in the exchange of that which is but pretended to be a Greivance for a most certain and undeniable greivance and for one Greivance if it could be proved to be one for a Seminary and complication of Greivances and to take away wardships from the estates of 1 in every 20. of the people when they should happen and make 19 in every 20 to be every day in every yeare in wardship to an Excise upon a considerable part of their dayly Dyer and Sustenance That small Sum of 100000 l. per an may upon any discontent of the people by reason of the payment of that Excise be Petitioned against or taken away by Parliament or by some insurrection or mutiny of the common people which Naples and France this Kingdom can tell us do sometimes happen and the wisdom of Kings and Princes do use to suspect and provide against or if some other unlucky difference which God avert should happen betwixt the King and his people may fall into the Case or Example of the Customs and Poundage and Tonnage in the beginning of the Raign of his late Majesty which being stopped by the Parliament and declared against did put him into unâ—it necessities and made those unhappy controversies and misunderstandings betwixt him and many of the shorter Parliaments which disabled him from aiding his Friends and Allyes and was the beginning of our never enough to be lamented national Calamities and Reproaches and proved to be the ruine and disturbance also of a great part of Christendome Such an imposed or continued excise will by the Arts and Deceipts of the Brewers and Ale men and those that gather and pay it in the first place be as all excises commonly are double charged upon the people who instead of 100000 l. per an laid upon their Beer Ale will by the abuse which will be committed therein as to quantity and quality lay and charge another 100000 l. per an upon the people and the Brewer in every 6 d. or 12 d. Excise to be laid upon every Barrel of six shillings Beer will be sure to make his Beer so as he shall get double if not more than that Excise amounts unto And as it could never have been at first setled without the awe and help of Garrisons Troops of Horse and Companies of Foot in every County and City and the Souldiers assistance to enforce and gather it from those that would not pay it or were not able so in all probability it will be now again never be brought into a constant yearly Revenue without a constant formerly used way of keeping a standing Army at the charge of sixty or ninety thousand pounds per mensem or the month which will be more troublesome and chargeable than 52 Escheators and as many Feodaries who may be men of wisdom Integrity good Estates in their Countries for there will be a great difference between the charge or yearly Revenue of the Court of Wards which is made up of many small parts and favourable and easy Rents Fines and compositions quietly gathered and paid in by the Justice and Order of a Court of Wards honest and responsable Officers and 90000 l. per annum being to be Collected by this Excise at the charge of as much for every month in the year from the ruder and most ignorant part of the people who will not Tributorum causam quaerere sed quaeri sooner murmure and complain of Taxes or Tributes than rationally enquire into the causes of them and by a weeping woful Arithmeticque of the poor and inferior sort of people in every County be reckoned to be no great part or peice of Husbandry to purchase off 90000 l. per annum yearly charges to free those that held in Capite at the rate of 100000 l. or rather 200000 l. per annum which is to be paid out of the Excise and pay 90000 l. per mensem or 60. or 30000 l. per mensem besides for collecting of it besides the free quarterings and other insolencies of the common Souldiers And by making that part of the Excise perpetual give the people to understand that the next occasion given or made may introduce a perpetuity of Excise upon all other things which to have been introduced but upon a temporary and not like to be long lasting necessity would before Olivers Sadle had been put upon the peoples backs have put them into multitudes of Complaints And in the Raign of King James and that of our late blessed Martir King Charles before he was driven from his Throne would have been but only in the advising of it more Capital and offensive than that which was charged upon the late Earl of Strafford and made more in one single fault or crime than all the accumulations of Crimes against him could arrive unto and was so dreadful to this Nation and before hand hated as they were afraid of every thing that tended that way So as in a Parliament in the Raign of King James some of the House of Commons having been informed that the King had imployed a Gentleman into Holland to inquire concerning the manner manage of their Excise which as afterwards appeared upon examination was but for curiosity and learning sake were so troubled at it as the Gentleman hardly escaped a vote whether he should not be most severely punished And whether Excise or not Excise will if those Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service which have hitherto been as the Life and Land-guards of the King and his people should be taken away some other wayes of means are to be found out to supply it for the people being sworn by their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to assist and defend the King and all his Rights and Jurisdictions if they would not defend him and take a care of those Oaths will likely be willing enough to defend themselves in defending him Or if they should not their Representatives in Parliament would as they have for this twenty years last past not only assesse them but make them
as in the late warrs of Denmark where they were concerned to adventure through many dangers to ayde the Danes against the Swedes found their design more out of order then it would otherwise have been for that the Seamen where they doe not use to impresse would not be perswaded to goe at all without a greater pay then ordinary And whether that discharge of the Emperor Charles the 5 th did absolve them from their Clientelage or holding of the Empire or no it is well known that they keep all or most of the incidents belonging to Tenures in Capite as their Laudemia's or Reliefs Investitures Fines for Alienation and the like and living under those great burthens and otherwise intollerable Taxes Contributions and Excises which are made only tollerable by their hostilities and depraedations exercised upon Spain and its Dominions do notwithstanding almost in every Frontier Town in the winter time make their Inhabitants hold by a kind of Service as to their own defence in the alotment of every house or street to break dayly a proportion of Ice in times of Frost in their Town Ditches The Assessements for horse and foot Arms and charge and pay of Armies and so much as for Ribbons and Trophies as they are now called which in the time of our Military Tenures the people were not at all or so much troubled with will swell and be the greater when so many as were to be contributary in a more especial manner shall be exempted from that and put under the general Assessement which will make the burthen to be the heavier and will be as little for the ease of the people as if all the many Hospitals and Almes-Houses in England which were built and endowed at the great charge of the Founders with large and perpetual Annual Revenues in many Parishes and places in England and the great number of Charities and charitable uses which since the Protestant Religion established in England have by wills and Testaments been given to the poor should be taken away and put to other uses as those loving and tender hearted Statesmen the late committee of Slavery rather than Safety or the Rump Assembly were about to do and put into some Godly Treasury and they that must pay a great deal more in their Rates and Assessements for the poor left to make Affidavits that the remedy was taken away and a Disease put in the place of it The King who is Pater Patriae the great and careful Parent and Father of his people and who by God Almighty is trusted with the Welfare Protection and Defence of them shall only have that part of the Court of Wards and kind of Prerogative left unto him to provide and take care for Lunatiques and Ideots Shall not now enjoy that antient and well performed trust of protecting the Fatherless nor have that power in looking to Orphanes and their Estates in their Minorities as the Dutch and States of Holland have who though the people under the Jurisdiction of that Republique do hold neither by Knight Service of it nor can be well said to hold in Soccage or as Fieâ—â— Roturier where they have so little Land but by Navigation rather and Commerce have their Wees Kamer or Court of Orphanes do not think it fitting to trust them and their Estates to the Mothers although they have thereby a Custom and Pacta antenuptialia a Joyntenancy and power of dispose to their own kindred nor the kindred on either side to make their profit by them and sub amici fallere nomen under a colour of love and kindnesse either ruine them or leave them to ruine themselves by selling them and others good bargains And shall not have so much privilege as the City of London hath who by antient Custome have an absolute Court of Wards in the City though it passe under the name of the Court of Orphanes as may appear by their antient Customs viz. The Mayor and Aldermen that are for the time by custom of the City shall have the Wardships and Mariages of all the Orphans of the said City after the death of their Ancestors although the same Ancestors do hold in the City of any other Lord by what Service soever Ought to inquire of all the Lands and Tenements Goods and Chattels within the said City appertaining to such Orphans and safely keep them to the use and profit of such Orphans or otherwise commit the same Orphans together with their Lands and Tenements Goods and Chattels to others their Friends by suâ—ficient Surety found of Record in the Chamber of Guild-hall to maintain conveniently the said Orphans during their nonage and their Lands and Tenemâ—nts to repair and their said Goods and Chattels safely to keep and thereof to render a good and loyal accompt before the said Mayor and Aldermen to the profit of the same Infants when they shall come to their age or when they shall be put to a mistery or shall marry by the advice of the said Mayor and Aldermen And that in all Cases except that it be otherwise ordained and disposed for the same Orphans or for their Lands and Tenements Goods and Chattels by the expresse words contained in the Testaments of their Ancestors And no such Orphans ought to be married without the assent of the said Mayor and Aldermen and also where Lands or tenements Goods and Chattels within the City are devised to an Infant within Age living with his Father and that such an Infant is no Orphan yet by usage of the said City the said Lands and Tenements Goods and Chattels shall be in custody of the Mayor and Aldermen as well as of Orphans to maintain and keep them to the use and profit of the same Infant except that the Father of the Infant or some other of his Friends will find sufficient surety or Record to maintain and keep the said Lands and Tenements Goods and Chattels to the use and profit of the said Infant and thereof to render a good and loyal accompt as is aforesaid And may if the Kings Court of Wards shall be dissolved and the Tenures in Capite taken away be indangered or petitioned against which within these last twenty years hath been a notable Engine and peice of Artillery of the factious who made great use of Petitions many a causeless complaint to overturn any antient useful constitution of the Kingdom well approved Rights and Liberties of the people in general or of some men in particular Will renverse and overturn many of the Fundamental Laws and Constitutions of the Kingdom throw them with their heels upwards into a Ditch of all manner of evils and confusion which will so increase and fall upon them and us as no after endeavours by any new Bills or Acts of Parliament will be able to rescue them and being once dead or destroyed will not meet with any that either can or will be able to call them like Lazarus out of the grave or
punished for it hath been clearly asserted by eminent and learned Judges and Sages of the Law as the Lord cheif Justice Hobart Sr. Francis Bacon and Sr. Jonh Davis Attorney General to King James in Ireland that the Superlative power of Parliaments above all but the King is in some things for restrained as it cannot enact things against Right Reason or common Right or against the Lawes of God or Nature that a man shall be Judge in his own Case as that the King shall have no Subsidies whereby to defend himself and his people that Children shall not obey their Parents and the like And that Tenures in Capite and by Knight service are of so transcendent a nature and so radically in the Crown and Fundamental Lawes as no Act of Parliament can take it away or alter it and are so inseperable as Sr. John Davis saith that in a Parliament holden in England in the latter end of the raign of King James it was resolved by the House of Commons that the Wit of man could not frame an Act of Parliament whereby all Tenures of the Crown might be extinguished And Judge Hutton who in the Case of the Ship-money would allow the King no more Prerogative then what could not be denyed him did publicquely deliver it for Law which in that great and learned Assembly of Judges and Lawyers was not contradicted that Tenures in Capite are so inseperable in the Crown as the Parliament will not nor cannot sever them and the King cannot release them And such is the care for the defence of the Kingdome which belongeth inseperably to the King as Head or supream Protector so as if any Act of Parliament should enact that he should not defend the Kingdome or that he should have no aides from his Subjects to defend the Realm such Acts would not bind but would be void because they would be against all natural Reason And Judge Crooke also doth in his Argument against the Ship-money wherein he concurred with Justice Hutton alleage that if a statute were made that a King should not defend the Kingdome it were void being against Law and Reason And when a Parliament is called by the Kings Writ to preserve his Kingdom and Magna Charta so little intends that any future Parliament should alter or take away any Liberties granted or confirmed thereby or any fundamental Laws which are incorporate with the essence of Government as it hath been by several confirmations of it enacted that all Laws hereafter to be made to the contrary shall be Null and void and with good reason as to the King and Mesne Lords in the changing of their Tenures into Socage when as ex contractu obligatio and ex obligatione Actio should as well hold in those benificial pactions which were in the Creation of those Tenures betwixt the King Lords and Tenants as in Bonds Bills and Assumpsits or any other contracts whatsoever And is so great a part of right Reason in the opinion of Forreigners and according to the Law of Nature and Nations as in the German Empire though it hath heretofore lost much of its power and authority by the greatnesse of some of the Princes and the many Liberties and Priviledges granted to Cities Towns its remaining Prerogatives notwithstanding are said to be Jura Majestatis instar puncti divisionem non recipientia adeoque Imperatoris personae cohaerent ut nec volens ijs se abdicare aut alium in consortium vocare possit so inseperable as they are capable of no division and do so adhere unto the Emperors person as he cannot if he would renounce or transferre them over to any other And Bodiâ— that understood France very well saith that Si Princeps publica praedia cum imperio aut jurisdictione eo modo fruenda concesserit quo ipse fruetur etiam si Tabulis jura Majestatis excepta non fuerunt ipso jure tamen excepta judicantur if the King shall grant any of his Lands to hold as freely and with as much power and jurisdiction as he himself enjoyed it the jura Majestatis or Regalities are always adjudged and taken to be excepted though there be no reservation or exception in the Letters Patents And the Parliament of Paris were so careful of the Kings Rights in Governing as when Francis the first had granted to the Queen his Mother a Commission to pardon and restore condemned persons it declared that such a grant quum sine Majestatis diminutione communicari non possit seeing it could not be granted without diminution of his Royal Authority was void thereupon the Queen Mother intermedled no more therein The Conclusion WHen all therefore which can be but pretended against Tenures in Capite and by Knight service shall be put together and said and done they will come to no more then this The general Assessements for men and Horses and necessaries for War whether men will or no are a service incumbent upon every mans estate though they bought and purchased their Lands the Knight service which is now complained of is but where their Lands were given them for that purpose and ex pacto voluntate by Agreement For it hath allwayes been accompted to be no less than reason that qui sentit commodum sentire debet et onus the Rose and the Prickle must goe together and he that hath the profit may be well contented to doe something for it especially when it is no more then what he did agree to doe and beleived it to be a favour And if they now take those Lands to be a burden may if they please give themselves an ease by retorning of them to those that gave it And should not be murmured at or complained of when as those that live near the Sea doe live under a Charge or Imposition which is annual and sometimes very great upon all And in Holland are commanded and ordered yearly by the Dijck Graven or Magistrates appointed for that purpose to repair and amend their Sea walles Or as it is also in England by Direction of Law and Commissions of Sewers and doe but in that though their Lands were dearly paid for and not freely given as those doe which hold their Lands by Knight service and defend themselves by defending others And it will ever be a Rule and Maxime in Loyalty as well as in Law and right Reason that by the Lawes of God Nature and Nations as well as of England there is and ought to be a natural Allegiance to the King that Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy doe enjoyn every Subject to defend his Prince and his just Rights and Jurisdictions And that the safety of every man in particular and his own discretion should advise him to it unless they will think it to be wisdome in the Citizens of Constantinople who in the Seige thereof would rather keep their money and riches for the Turks to plunder then help