TENURE, in law, the holding or possession of land. The holding of land in England was originally either allodial or feudal. Allodial land was land held not of a superior lord, but of the king and people. Such ownership was absolute (see ALLODIUM). The Saxon invasion tended, without doubt, to re-establish the princi ple of common village ownership which formed the basis of both Celtic and German tenure. In the later Saxon period, however, private ownership became gradually more extended. Then the feudal idea began to make progress in England, much as it did about the same time on the Continent of Europe, and it received a great impetus from the Norman conquest. When English law began to settle down into a system the principle of feudalism was taken as the basis, and it gradually became the undisputed maxim of English law that the Sovereign was the supreme lord of all the land and that every one held under him as tenant (see FEUDAL ISM). All tenures, except free and common socage tenures, were abolished by the Law of Property Act, 1925 (s. 56), and provision
has been made for the abolition of copyhold and customary tenure and the extinction of manorial incidents, with a saving for grand and petty serjeanty services (ibid. ss. 128, 136, 139-143). The following modern cases may be consulted with regard to native tenures of land: In re Southern Rhodesia (1919) A.C. 211, 233 (aboriginal rights generally) ; Sobhn Za II. v. Miller (1926) A.C. 518 (West African) ; Amadu Tijani v. Secretary for Southern Nigeria (1921) 2 A.C. 399 (West African) ; A.G. for Quebec v. A.G. for Canada ( 1921 ) I A.C. 401 (Indian Reserves) : but it should be noted that in several colonies the matter has been the subject of legislation. In the United States the term tenure ordinarily is used to denote the manner whereby lands or tene ments are held, excluding lands held in fee simple. As an example, a person may have a life estate or tenure in land, or a tenure for a term of years. (See also ESTATE ; LAND; MANOR.)