settling a revenue upon his Majesty in lieu thereof." The Act recites that "since the interruption of the Court of Wards which hath been from the 24th day of February, 1645, many persons have by will and otherwise made disposal of their lands held by Knight's Service, whereupon divers questions might possibly arise unless some seasonable remedy be taken to prevent the same. The Statute abolishes tenure by Knight's Service and its incidents, and also purveyance and pre-emption, and then proceeds to confer on his Majesty, his heirs and successors, “a full and ample recompence and satisfaction," which is done by means of an hereditary excise duty', for collecting which stringent provisions are enacted.

It may be thought that the abolition of military tenures was less the result of legislative policy, than one necessitated by the circumstances of the times. Independently of the inextricable confusion adverted to in the Act into which titles to land would have been thrown by a nullification of conveyances during a period of the previous fifteen years from 1645 to 1660, it may be doubted whether the onerous obligations of military tenures could have been effectually enforced at the juncture of a restoration to a throne. An income from them could have been derived only by an exercise of a prerogative more odious in its character, and more precarious in its fruits than a stipulated revenue paid by the unfailing consumers of beer and liquors.

Military Tenures and their incidents were a grievance, which could only have been upheld by immemorial and uninterrupted usage. The Commonwealth, however challengable its foundation, conferred a lasting benefit on the Country by having broken the chain of this and numerous other impolitic usages, the revival of which became impracticable, after the nation had tasted

1 Liquors and beer were the principal articles of excise in the reign of Charles II.; but tea was an exciseable article during that reign, the duty not being levied on the imported commodity, but on the liquor bought in the shops. Tea is mentioned in the Excise Act of 12th Car. II. c. 23, and, as a rarity, by Pepys. Waller has a poem entitled, "Of Tea, commended by her Majesty."

the fruits of their suspension. Restrictions on the power of alienation, licensed plunder of the estates of minors, tendered marriages of Wards for the pecuniary profit of their feudal lords, with a variety of other exactions, such as liveries, primer seisins, aids, reliefs, ousterlemains, needed only to be intermitted for fifteen years, to ensure their extinction with or without the Legislature. After the seasonable though nipping frost of the Commonwealth, our law books could never again admit of illustrations such as one which Lord Bacon furnishes in his legal Maxims: "If I covenant with my Ward that I will tender unto him no other marriage than the gentlewoman whose picture I delivered unto him, and that picture hath about it ætatis suæ anno 16, and the gentlewoman is seventeen years old; yet, nevertheless, if it can be proved that the picture was made for that gentlewoman, I may, notwithstanding the mistaking, tender her well enough." Neither, after the Parliament of Barebones, was it probable that any future Sir Thomas Smith, in 66 a Commonwealth of England," should write, and write in vain, that "Many men do esteem Wardship by Knight's Service contrary to nature, that a freeman and gentleman should be bought and sold like a horse or an ox, and so change guardians at first, second, or third hand, as masters and lords. The King having so many Wards, must needs give or sell them, and the grantee or buyer has no natural care of the infant, but only of their own gain; thus, they will not suffer a Ward to take any great pains either in study or any other hardness, lest he should be sick and die, before he hath married the buyer's daughter, sister, or cousin, for whose sake he bought him, and then all the money which he paid for him would be lost. The Guardian doth but seek to make the most of his Ward as of an ox or other beast." Among other evil consequences of the system, Sir T. Smith states, that "Wards are married very young and before they be wise, and, many times, do not greatly love their wives."

The Court of Wards was of such odious memory, that when a Bill was introduced in the reign of Charles II., in favour of the College of Heralds, to restrain, as Dugdale writes, their "old enemies, the painter stainers," who, he says, had no right to paint coats of arms, it was got rid of, as he relates, although twice moved, owing to a clamour, that it was a stepping-stone to revive the Court of Wards.

With regard to the extent of the operation of the Statute of Charles II. in emancipating the lands of the subject, and the justice of the mode of compensation to the King which was adopted;—it is to be observed that the emancipation reached only to lands held by the tenure of Knight's Service. It appears from Littleton's Tenures and Coke's Commentary upon them, that a considerable part of the lands of England were held under other tenures, especially Socage, which was supposed to have been the tenure of lands originally appropriated to agricultural purposes, and not the sustentation of Knights and Esquires. The passing of the Act of Charles II. was, probably, much facilitated in consequence of the landed aristocracy who held estates by the tenure of Knight's Service transferring their feudal burdens to the shoulders of the general body of consumers of exciseable articles. Prynne, in a debate on the Bill, said that its operation was to "make every householder a tenant in capite."

(b) Corruption of Blood, Escheat, and Forfeiture in cases of treason and felony.

With regard to Corruption of Blood;—an important exception is admitted by Blackstone to the blessings of the Statute of Charles II., in abolishing the doctrine and consequences of the military tenures, viz. in leaving to posterity the corruption of inheritable blood upon attainder of treason or felony. Hale writes, in the reign of Charles II., subsequently to the Statute under consideration, "If the Son of a person attaint purchase land, and die without issue, it shall not descend to his uncle,

for the attainder of his father corrupted the blood, whereby the bridge is broken down. Corruption of blood, indeed, involving an obstruction of all descents by or through a person attainted, even as Blackstone says, to the twentieth generation, has been abolished since the reign of Charles II., and, thereby, our public law has been made more perfect than at the vaunted era of its theoretical perfection.

In reference to Escheats ;-these, like Corruption of Blood, are not peculiar to military tenures, and, therefore, were not strictly within the scope of the Act abolishing the Court of Wards; but, although unnoticed by Blackstone, are a very important qualification of his eulogium, that the Statute of Charles II. "Extirpated all the slaveries of the feudal system," and “removed all the oppressive appendages of feudal tenures from encumbering the estates of the Subject1." Escheats are one of the most oppressive appendages of feudal tenures.

Escheats pro delicto in the reign of Charles II. were, probably, more distinguishable from Forfeitures than in the present day. Judging from the Books, and even from Blackstone, there were, in the reign of Charles II., and later, numerous Subjects who had lands held of them in fee simple, and who, if their tenants committed felony not amounting to treason, took the felon's estate by way of escheat after the King had received the satisfaction of his year, day, and waste.

The mesne lord, as he was called, was entrusted with the exaction and entitled to the profit of a large portion of the punishment incident to felony, without any obligation of tempering

1 Blackstone states an exception to his position of the statute of Charles II. having extirpated all the slaveries of the feudal system, thus: "Except, perhaps, in Copyhold tenure; and in this also they are now in great measure enervated by gradual custom, and the interposition of our Courts of Justice." The subject of Copyholds may be thought to have little to do with the question of the vigor of the English Constitution in the reign of Charles II.; but it is observable how Blackstone appears to have been scared by his own liberality, and to have made amends, by departing altogether from his subject, to prove that if the Constitution was not perhaps perfect in one particular iota, it has been made more perfect since.

justice with mercy. A Land-Sovereign of this species is now a rara avis, though, as a chimera at least, he haunts the chambers of Conveyancers.

Whether the Sovereign could have claimed lands by escheat as immediate lord of the soil, or by forfeiture, in the reign of Charles II., his right, as well as that of any lurking mesne lord, has, within memory, been abolished in respect of all offences except treason and murder. With respect to escheats pro defectu hæredis, an additional value has been imparted to property, that stimulus of national industry, since the reign of Charles II., by the recent Descent Act, which gives the estate of a deceased proprietor to his half blood, or his father, mother, or ancestor in a direct ascending line, rather than to his Parens Patriæ.

With regard to forfeiture of goods and chattels in cases of treason and felony ;-this was allowed by the Constitution in the reign of Charles II. to a much greater extent than at present. Sir Matthew Hale, after reciting a statute which prohibits the goods and chattels of a deceased person being seized before conviction, mentions that Vane's rents were seized in the hands of his tenants before he was even indicted; and he subjoins, "I know not how it comes to pass, that the case of seizing the goods of a person accused of felony, though imprisoned, or not imprisoned, hath so far prevailed, that, notwithstanding the statute, it passeth for law and common practice, and nothing is more usual."

The same Convention Parliament which has been supposed to have dealt so severe a blow on the feudal system, passed, in the vindictive and insatiate spirit of feudality, an Act (12 Car. II. c. 30) whereby all and every the species of real property or chattels real of Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw and Pride, all deceased before the Restoration, and of about twenty persons who are stated to have fled, which they had on the 20th of March, 1646, are declared forfeited to the King. Under this Act the estate of Ludlow, in Wiltshire, became forfeited, and afterwards