Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/94

 82 ervice, o the other is a rent or render, both tending to ome purpoe relative to the king's peron. Petit erjeanty, as defined by Littleton, conits in holding lands of the king by the ervice of rendering to him annually ome mall implement of war, as a bow, a word, a lance, an arrow, or the like. This, he ays, is but ocage in effect; for it is no peronal ervice, but a certain rent: and, we may add, it is clearly no predial ervice, or ervice of the plough, but in all repects liberum et commune ocagium; only, being held of the king, it is by way of eminence dignified with the title of parvum ervitium regis, or petit erjeanty. And magna carta repects it in this light, when it enacts, that no wardhip of the lands or body hall be claimed by the king in virtue of a tenure by petit erjeanty.

in burgage is decribed by Glanvil, and is exprely aid by Littleton , to be but tenure in ocage; and it is where the king or other peron is lord of an antient borough, in which the tenements are held by a rent certain. It is indeed only a kind of town ocage; as common ocage, by which other lands are holden, is uually of a rural nature. A borough, as we have formerly een, is ditinguihed from other towns by the right of ending members to parliament; and, where the right of election is by burgage tenure, that alone is a proof of the antiquity of the borough. Tenure in burgage therefore, or burgage tenure, is where houes, or lands which were formerly the cite of houes, in an antient borough, are held of ome lord in common ocage, by a certain etablihed rent. And thee eem to have withtood the hock of the Norman encroachments principally on account of their inignificancy, which made is not worth while to compel them to an alteration of tenure; as an hundred of them put together would carce have amounted to a knight's fee. Beides, the owners of them, being chiefly artificers and perons engaged in trade, could not with any tolerable propriety be put on uch a Rh