Rent-service can only be reserved to the feoffor, donor, or lessor, or to their heirs, upon any feoffment, gift, or lease : and if rent is reserved generally, without specifying the persons, it will belong to the lessor, and after his death to those who are entitled to the reversion. Rent is payable at the dales mentioned in the reservation, but not till the last minute of the day on which it is payable.
When rent-service is in arrear, the common-law remedy for the recovery of it is by distress. [DrsTaEss.] By 4 Geo. IL c. 28, § 2, every landlord who by the terms of his lease has a right of re-entry in case of non-payment of rent, may, when half a year's rent is due, and there is no sufficient distress on the premises, serve a declaration in ejectment on his tenant, without any formal re-entry or previous demand of rent, and a recovery m such ejectment is final and conclusive, unless the rent and all costs are paid within six calendar months after the judgment in the action of ejectment has been executed. The action may also be stayed before trial, if the tenant will pay or tender to the lessor, or pay into court all the rent then in arrear, together with the costs. By the common law the lessor has also an action of debt for rent against a lessee for years or at will ; and by the statute of Anne (8, c. 14, § 4) there is also the same action against a lessee for life during the continuance of his estate, which had previously been given for ar rears of rent after the determination of the estate (32 Hen. VIII. c. 37). A lessor may also have an action of cove nant for rent, either by force of the im plication contained in such words as " yielding and paying" rent, or by force of an express covenant to pay, which is seldom omitted in any lease. If the les see assign his interest in the term, he, and his executors so far as they have assets, are still liable under the covenants to the person entitled to the reversion. The assignee also becomes bound by such of the covenants as run with the land, and is consequently liable to an action upon them. There is also the remedy by action of assumpsit or debt for the use and occupation of land, which action lies without any express agreement for rent.• Rent-service may be discharged in various ways. If the tenant be evicted from the lands demised to him, he is dis charged from payment of the rent ; and if the lessor purchase the lessee's interest, the rent is also discharged. The lessor may release a part of the rent-service, without releasing the whole.
A rent-charge is a rent granted out of land either at common law or by the Statutes of Uses, with a power of distress for the recovery of the rent. Such rents may be created by the owner of the land who retains the property of it ; and they may also be reserved ou the alienation of the land. These rents differ from rent
service in not being connected with ten ure, and the remedy by distress is there fore not an incident to rent-charges, but is created by the same instrument which creates the rent-charge. If no power of distress is given, the rent is a rent-seek. Rent-charge may be created either by deed or by will. Sometimes, by the terms of the grant, the grantee of a rent charge is empowered to enter on the land and satisfy himself for all arrears out of the profits of the land. When a rent charge is created under the Statute of Uses (§ 4, 5) with a power of distress and entry upon the land in case of arrear, the person to whom the rent-charge is given obtains the legal estate in the rent charge, with all the remedies for its recovery, as he would by a direct grant of the rent-charge ; and the same instru ment (lease and release) which creates the rent-charge may also make a settle ment of the lands charged with the rent. In this way in a marriage-settlement a rent-charge may be provided for the wife's jointure.
An estate in a rent-charge may be either in fee simple, in fee tail, for lives, or for years, according to the terms of the original limitation. A rent-charge of inheritance is real estate, and descend ible to the heir ; but a payment that is due belongs to the person representative.
A rent-seek, as already mentioned, is not, like rent-service, accompanied with a right to distrain at common law ; but by the stat. 4 Geo. II. c. 28. § 5, this dis tinction in respect of remedy between rent-service and rent-seek, created since that statute, is abolished ; and the act also applies to rent-seck mated prior to the statute which had been duly paid for three years out of the last twenty years. Other rents. though they belong to one of the three divisions above mentioned, are often distinguished by particular names : thus the real rent due from a freeholder is called a chief rent (redditus capitalis) ; the rents of freeholders and antient copy holders of manors are sometimes called rents of assise, being assisi, or ascertained, and also quit rents (quieti redditus), be cause they are a quittance and discharge of all services.
A fee-farm rent is properly a perpetual rent-service reserved by the crown, or, before the statute of Quia Emptores FEUDAL SYSTEM], by a subject, upon a grant in fee simple. The purchaser of fee-farm rents originally reserved to the crown, but sold under 22 Car. II. c. 6, has the same power of distress that the king had, and so may distrain on other land of the tenant not subject to the rent.