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 I 90 THE ANCESTOR 1292 to the inhabitants of the town of ' Montisfalc/ permitting them to hold feudum nobile^ excepto feudo militari. Another charter of 1245, quoted by Du Cange, speaks of two kinds of lands, that is to say, gentilis et servilis terra^ an exact prece- dent for the fief nolle and fief roturier of later times. In Eng- land also, as Spelman and Nichols^ have laid down, all franc fief was equally honourable and had the same privileges ' attached to it, whether held by archbishops, earls, barons, knights, or free-tenants, and it was for this reason, and not because of any superiority of birth, that ecclesiastical persons are sometimes classed among the nohiles. These things were not done without system, for bishops and abbots are never placed amongst the milites^ except when holding lay fiefs. In England also the same broad distinction may be traced between free land and bondage land. A villein or burgess in France was incapable of inheriting or acquiring lands held in feodo ; in the English possessions on the continent, franc fief could not be sold or alienated without the licence of the English king,^ and in our own country it was held that no one born in a villein nest could inherit such land, and that, if he bought it, his lord might at any moment enter upon it and possess it. It would thus appear that frank tenure was originally not a cause, but, in the words of Coke, a ' badge ' of gentility. Lands so held were free and honourable, because the persons to whom they had been granted were members of a military and privileged caste. On the continent nobility was con- nected with the profession of arms, and the fact that a man had no weapons in his house, and no horses in his stable, was in the fourteenth century held to be prima facie proof that he could not be noble.^ Another indication of the original nobility of all tenants in feodo is that all were eligible for knighthood. In Germany, France, Aragon, Sicily, and, as I suppose, in Europe generally, none but villeins and burgesses were by birth incap- vocant^ and * Villanumi! The statute of uncertain date for respiting of knight- hood directs that as regards those persons who held land in socage, owing no foreign service, the rolls of the chancery should be searched, and * it shall be done as it used to be done.' It is probable that even after this statute was passed, all who held land in socage to the value of a year were liable to be compelled to take up knighthood. ^ Du Cange, under * Gentilis.^ ^ Leicester, i. 170 note, 214, 3 Du Cange, * Feudum Francum^ ^ See the instance of this given by Du Cange {Nobilitatio).