COPYHOLD, in English law, an ancient form of land tenure, legally defined as a "holding at the will of the lord according to the custom of the manor." Its origin is to be found in the occupa tion by villani, or non-freemen, of portions of land belonging to the manor of a feudal lord. In the time of the Domesday survey the manor was in part granted to free tenants, in part reserved by the lord himself for his own uses. The estate of the free tenants is the freehold estate of English law ; as tenants of the same manor they assembled together in manorial court or court baron, of which they were the judges. The portion of the manor reserved for the lord (the demesne, or domain) was cultivated by labourers who were bound to the land (adscripti glebae). They could not leave the manor, and their service was obligatory. These villani, however, were allowed by the lord to cultivate portions of land for their own use. It was a mere occupation at the pleasure of the lord, but in course of time it grew into an occupation by right, recognized first of all by custom and afterwards by law. This kind of tenure is called by the lawyers villenagium, and it probably marks a great advance in the general recognition of the right when the name is applied to lands held on the same con ditions not by villeins but by free men. The tenants in villenage were not, like the freeholders, members of the court baron, but they appear to have attended in a humbler capacity, and to have solicited the succession to the land occupied by a deceased father, or the admission of a new tenant who had purchased the good will, as it might be called, of the holding, paying for such favours certain customary fines or dues. In relation to the tenants in villenage, the court baron was called the customary court. The records of the court constituted the title of the villein tenant, held by copy of the. court roll (whence the term "copyhold") ; and the customs of the manor therein recorded formed the real property law applicable to his case.
Copyhold had long been established in practice before it was formally recognized by the law. At first it was in fact, as it is now in the fictitious theory of the law, a tenancy at will, for which none of the legal remedies of a freeholder were available. In the reign of Edward IV., however, it was held that a tenant in villenage had an action of trespass against the lord. In this way a species of tenant-right, depending on and strongly supported by popular opinion, was changed into a legal right. But it retained many incidents characteristic of its historical origin. The life of copyhold assurance, it is said, is custom. Copyhold was neces sarily parcel of a manor, and the freehold was said to be in the lord of the manor. The court roll of the manor is the evidence of title and the record of the special laws as to fines, quit rents, heriots, etc., prevailing in the manor. The lord, as legal owner of the fee-simple of the lands, had a right to all the mines and minerals and to all the growing timber, although the tenant may have planted it himself. A species of tenure resembling copyhold was what is known as customary freehold.
The feudal obligations attaching to copyhold tenure were found to cause much inconvenience to the tenants, while being of no great value to the lord. One of the most vexatious of these was the heriot, under which name the lord was entitled to seize the tenant's best beast or other chattel in the event of the tenant's death. The inconvenience caused by these feudal incidents of the tenure led to a series of statutes, having for their object the conversion of copyhold into freehold. By the Copyhold Act which thereafter governed statutory enfranchisement, the former Copyhold Acts 1841-87, were repealed, and the law was con solidated and improved. By Part V. of the Law of Property Act 1922, all copyhold land was enfranchised on the terms therein set forth and becoming effective on Jan. 1, 1925.
See C. Watkins, On Copyholds (1825) ; A. Brown, Copyhold Enfranchisement Acts (1895) ; Scriven on Copyholds, ed. A. Brown (1896) ; C. I. Elton, Law of Copyholds (1898).