Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/574

 472 .NOTES AND QUERIES. [ aviii.j ra ii > mi. example is Norman), where we find an equivalent and expressive phrase. " Les fiefs < TENANT IN CAPITE." son * tenus nu a nu [Lat. immediate] des~ i seignurs quand il n'y a aulcune personne, >. vui. 429.) j entre eulx et leurs tenants" (' Ancienne- MR. GRIFFITH, in his note on this ancient man-! Coutuine ( de Gruchy)/ c. 29). So too a ner of tenure, is interested to discover when it! * enam : s 'capitalis dommus" is his imme- diate lord, not the lord who is chief above and fundamental, not acquired. Until 1258 ' c ' 29;  ton,' p. 474, 13. the seventeenth century it was a fiction I But P erha P s tms usage of the term "chief of the law that all lands were held! t ord was not very consistently maintained : either mediately or immediately of the! lt was g 1 ^ trouble in 1304. King, either by knight -service or socage! In En S land tenure in capite was abolished This was the foundation stone on which l by stat : 12, Car 2 ' c ' 24 and a11 tenures- the feudal system was built. So absolute j turned mto free and common socage. was this maxim that it was held that even ' ROBY FLETCHER. the King could not give lands in so uncon- ditional a manner as to set them free from TETHER BOOK (12 S. vm. 432). This tenure. If he expressly declared that his is undoubtedly a misprint for Terrar Book, patentee should hold the lands absque Terrar or Terrier, Terrarium, Catalogus- alioque inde reddendo, yet the law or estab- i Terrarum > was a land roll or survey of lands,, lished policy of the kingdom would create ' either of a single person or of a town. It a tenure and the patentee should anciently (before stat. 12 Car. 2, c. 24) have held from him in capite by knight -service. Accord- ingly the legal definition of tenure in capite was caput, i.e., Rex, unde tenere in capite, est tenere de rege, omnium terrarum capite. Anciently the tenure was of two kinds, the contained the quantity of acres, tenants' names and such like. In the Exchequer there is a Terrar of all the glebe lands in_ England made about 11 E. 3. RORY FLETCHER. The ' N.E.D.' gives tethe and tething as one principal and general, the other special or i obsol et forms of tithe and tithing. Is subaltern. The principal and general was! not the book referred to likely to be a list of the King as caput regni et caput generalis- * the lands and the owners thereof who- simum omnium feodorum, the fountain whence were .subject to pay tithes in 1779? Or all feuds and tenures have their main origin I Perhaps it was compiled for the convenience the special was of a particular subiect. as' of the tythmg-man, who was employed to special was of a particular subject, as caput feudi sen terrae illius, so called from his being the first that granted the land in such a manner of tenure, whence he was called capitalis dominus. Time and necessity made many modifi- cations in the methods of tenure, and the interesting examples contributed by MR. GRIFFITH show how the term in question was collect the tithe-corn, i.e., one sheave of every ten which belonged to the tithe- owner. ARCHIBALD SPARKE. CAPTAIN COOK: MEMORIALS (12 S. viii. 132, 176, 198, 218, 297, 335). The in- scription on the plate at Point Venus, as Cook called it (not Venus Point, as the used in practice in a much wider sense j Admiralty have it nowadays), is not quite Pollock and Maitland (' History of English ' accurately quoted in ' N. & Q.' of April Law,' 2nd ed.,i., pp. 233, 234) state that in the' < last - I photographed it on Jan. 1, thirteenth century the term "in capite"' 1909 and took an exact copy of the words had come to be equivalent to "immediately," on the brass P lat e, which are these : " sine medio "; thus even a burgage tenant This Memorial, erected by Captain James Cook might have "tenants in capite" holding to commemorate the observation of the transit A. . ,. V s of Venus, June 3rd, 1769, was restored and fenced ol him Again, in the time of Henry I., round by the local Administration at Tahiti, Koger holds of Nigel, Nigel of the Earl and this plate was placed here by the Royal of Chester : Nigel consents that Roger j Society and Royal Geographical Society in 1901. shall hold of the Earl "in capite ut vulgo The original nucleus of the present " Me- loquitur" ('Hist. Abingd.,' ii. 67). The term morial" is a small fillet of brass which was was in use in Normandy (MR. GRIFFITH'S first! fixed in a trimmed blockjof coral limestone