Page:Landholding in England.djvu/31

 Another most important statute was enacted five years later (1290). It is sometimes called the "Statute of Westminster the Third," but more often, Quia Emptores. Its object was to prevent the "conditions" under which lands were sold from changing the tenure. Before the Statute of Quia Emptores, the King's greater barons frequently granted out smaller manors to inferior persons, who in their turn granted out still smaller estates in the same way, and this "subinfeudation" was going on indefinitely, until the great barons saw that they were losing all their feudal profits of escheats, wardships and marriages, which fell into the lands of these "mesne" or middle lords, the immediate superiors of the actual tenant. The preamble of the statute very frankly says that "great men and other lords" thought it "very hard and extreme" that they should thus lose their profits, so henceforth all feoffees must hold of the chief lord (lord paramount), and not of the feoffer, or person who transferred the holding. And all lands must be sold subject to the same "service or customs," to which it had been subject by the original tenure. Quia Emptores "abolished all subinfeudations, and gave liberty for all men to alienate their lands to be holden of the next immediate lord" (Blackstone). This did not authorise alienation in Mortmain.

Before the Conquest, land could be left by Will. This almost ceased at the Conquest, and by the Common Law lands could be transferred only by "solemn livery of seizin" (delivery of possession), by matter of record, or sufficient writing. But Quia Emptores allowed freeholders (except the King's tenants in capite) to leave lands by Will.

For three hundred years, the legal history of English landholding is in great part the history of devices to obtain land free from feudal burdens, and of counter-devices to defeat these attempts. It must not be supposed that these feudal burdens constituted the whole of the demands made upon the people. The fifteenths and tenths granted by Parliament for the needs of the King and country were not