(2) Free Socage. The early history of socage, with its division into ordinary and privileged, is involved in obscurities which do not require to be unravelled for the purpose at present on hand. The services which had to be returned for both varieties were not military but agricultural, and their exact nature, and amount varied considerably. Although not so honourable as chivalry, free socage was less burdensome in respect that two of the most irksome of the feudal incidents, wardship and marriage, did not apply. When knight’s service was abolished those who had previously held their lands by it, whether under the Crown or under a mesne lord, were henceforward to hold in free socage, which thus came to be the normal holding throughout England after the Restoration.[[66]]
(3) Fee-farm was the name applied to lands held in return for services which were neither military nor agricultural, but consisted only of an annual payment in money. The “farm” thus indicates the rent paid, which apparently might vary without limit, although it was long maintained that a fee-farm rent must amount at least to one quarter of the annual value. This error seems to have been founded on a misconstruction of the Statute of Gloucester.[[67]] Some authorities[[68]] reject the claims of fee-farm to rank as a tenure separate from socage; although chapter 37 of Magna Carta seems to recognize the distinction.
(4) Frankalmoin is the tenure by which pious founders granted lands to the uses of a religious house. It was also the tenure on which the great majority of glebe lands throughout England were held by the village priests, the parsons of parish churches. The grant was usually declared to have been made in liberam eleemosinam or “free alms” (that is, as a free gift for which no temporal services were to be rendered).[[69]] In Scots charters the return formally stipulated was preces et lacrymae (the prayers and tears of the holy men of the foundation for the soul of the founder).
(5) Grand serjeanty was a highly honourable tenure sharing the distinctions and the burdensome incidents of knight’s service, but distinct in this, that the tenant, in place of ordinary military duties, performed some specific office in the field, such as carrying the King’s banner or lance, or else acted as his constable or marshal or other household officer in the palace, or performed some important service at the coronation.[[70]]
An often-quoted example of a serjeanty is that of Sir John Dymoke and his family, who have acted as the Sovereign’s champions at successive coronations from Richard II. to Queen Victoria, ready to defend the Monarch’s title to the throne, if questioned, by battle in the ancient form.
Grand serjeanties were liable to wardship and marriage, as well as to relief, but not, as a rule, to payment of scutage.[[71]] William Aguilon, we are told by Madox,[[72]] "was charged at the Exchequer with several escuages. But when it was found by Inquest of twelve Knights of Surrey that he did not hold his lands in that county by military tenure, but by serjeanty of finding a Cook at the King’s coronation to dress victuals in the King’s kitchen, he was acquitted of the escuages."
(6) Petty serjeanty may be described in the words of Littleton as “where a man holds his lands of our lord the king to yield to him yearly a bow or sword, or a dagger or a knife ... or to yield such other small things belonging to war.”[[73]]
The grant of lands on such privileged tenures was frequently made in early days on account of the special favour entertained by the King for the original grantee, due, it might be, to the memory of some great service rendered at a critical juncture to the King’s person or interests. A few illustrative examples may be cited from the spirited description of a scholar whose accuracy can be relied upon. Serjeanties, as Miss Bateson tells us, "were neither always military nor always agricultural, but might approach very closely the service of knights or the service of farmers.... The serjeanty of holding the King’s head when he made a rough passage across the Channel, of pulling a rope when his vessel landed, of counting his chessmen on Christmas Day, of bringing fuel to his castle, of doing his carpentry, of finding his potherbs, of forging his irons for his ploughs, of tending his garden, of nursing the hounds gored and injured in the hunt, of serving as veterinary to his sick falcons, such and many other might be the ceremonial or menial services due from a given serjeanty."[[74]]
In the days before legal definition had done its work, it must often have been difficult to say on which side of the line separating Petty Serjeanties from Grand Serjeanties any particular holding fell. Gradually, however, important and practical distinctions were established, making it necessary that the boundary should be defined with accuracy. In particular, the rule was established that Petty Serjeanties, while liable for relief, were exempt altogether from the burdensome incidents of wardship and marriage, which Grand Serjeanties shared with lands held by ordinary Barony or Knight’s service.[[75]] Thus the way was prepared for the practical identification of the Petty Serjeanties with ordinary socage at a later date.
(7) Burgage, confined exclusively to lands within free boroughs, is mentioned as a separate tenure by Littleton,[[76]] and his authority receives support from the words of chapter 37 of Magna Carta. Our highest modern authorities,[[77]] however, consider that it never acquired sufficiently distinct characteristics to warrant its acknowledgment as such. They treat it rather as a special variety of socage, used where the tenants were the members of a corporation. If their opinion must be accepted for England, it follows that, from common antecedents, entirely different results have developed in Scotland and in England respectively. While, north of the Tweed, several of the well-established English tenures have failed to make good their right to separate recognition, burgage has established itself beyond a doubt. Even the levelling process consummated by the Conveyancing (Scotland) Act of 1874 has not entirely abolished its separate existence.