the profits of marriage, wardship, and of most of the other old feudal preroga tives of the crown, were for some time still collected by the parliament, as they had formerly been by the king. The fabric of the feudal system in England however was eventually shattered by the storm of the Great Rebellion. The Court of Wards was in effect discontinued from 1645. The restoration of the king could not restore what had thus been in prac tice swept away. By the above-mentioned statute, 12 Car. II. c. 24, it was accord ingly enacted that from the year 1645 the Court of Wards and Liveries, and all wardship., liveries, primer-seisins, values, and forfeitures of marriage, &c., by rea son of any tenure of the king's majesty, or of any other by knights' tenures, should be taken away and discharged, together with all fines for alienations, tenure by homage, escuage, aids pur filz marrier and pur fair fitz chevalier, &c. ; and all tenures of any honours, manors, lands, tenements or hereditaments, or any estate of inheritance at the common law, held either of the king or of any other person or persons, bodies politic or corporate, were turned into free and common soc cage, to all intents and purposes. [Soo CAGE.] By the same statute every father was empowered by deed or will, ex ecuted in the presence of two witnesses, to appoint persons to have the guardian ship of his infant and unmarried children, and to have the custody and management of their property. It was not till after the lapse of nearly another century that the tenures and other institutions of feudalism were put an end to in Scotland by the statutes, passed after the Rebel lion, of the 20 Geo. H. c. 43, entitled 'An Act for abolishing Heritable Juris dictions;' and the 20 Geo. H. c. 50, entitled An Act for taking away the Tenure of Ward-holding in Scotland, for giving to heirs and successors a summary process against superiors, and for ascer taining the services of all tenants, &c.
Nor have estates tail in Scotland yet been relieved from the strictest fetters of a destination in perpetuity, either by the invention of common recoveries, or by levying a fine, or by any legislative enactment.
We have enumerated the principal statutes which may be considered as hav ing broken in upon the integrity of the feudal system, considered in reference to the power which the tenant of land can now exercise over it, and the right which others can enforce against him in respect of his property in it. But the system of tenures still exists. The statute of Charles II. only abolished military tenures and such parts of the feudal system as had become generally intolerable ; but all lands in the kingdom are still held either by soccage tenure, into which military tenures were changed, or else by the re spective tenures of frankalmoigne, grand serjeanty, and copyhold, which were not affected by the statute.
Some of the consequences of tenures, as they at present subsist, cannot be more simply exemplified than by the rules as to the FoRFErrtraz and ESCHEAT of lands, both of which however have un dergone modifications since the statute of Charles H.
To attain a comprehensive and exact view of the present tenures of landed property in England and their incidents and consequences, it would be necessary for the reader to enter upon a course of study more laborious and extensive than is consistent with pursuits not strictly legal. Still a general notion may be ac quired of their leading characteristics by referring to several of the articles already quoted, and to such heads as ATTAINDER,