9. Offices —A man may have a right to exercise a pub lic or private employment.
10. Dignities.—A man may have a property or estate therein.
11. Franchises are a royal privilege subsisting in the hands of a subject : as to hold court leer, manor, or lord ship ; to have waifs, wrecks, &c.
12. Corodies are a right of sustenance charged upon any particular person or estate.
13. Annuities are certain yearly sums chargeable only upon the person of the grantor, the security for which may be merely personal.—A rent charge is a burthen imposed upon, and issuing out of lands.
14. Rent service has corporeal service incident to it. Rent charge is where the owner of the rent has no fu ture interest or reversion expectant in the land. Quit-rent (quieti reditus) is an ancient invariable sum arising out of copyhold lands. Rack rent is where an hereditament is at its full value.—We return to corporeal heredita inents.
15. And first of tenures, or the different sorts of hold ings. The feudal constitution, although nearly in substance abolished by 12 Car. II. c. 24, still in a great measure re gulates the forms by which landed property is transmitted. —Free socage is a tenure by any free, certain, and deter minable service. This tenure is a relic of the Saxon liber ty ; includespetit serjeantry, which is holding lands of the king, by rendering him annually some small implement of war.
16. Tenure in burgage, is where the king or other person is lord of an ancient borough, in which the te nements are held by rent certain.—The youngest son succeeds to the burgage tenements upon the death of the father.
17. In gavel-kind tenure, the tenant is of age sufficient to alien his estate by feolfment at the age of fifteen years. The estate does not escheat in case of an attainder and execution for felony. The lands descend to all the sons equally.
18. Pure villenage was a precarious and slavish tenure, at the absolute will of the lord, upon uncertain services : from hence by general consent or encroachment have arisen modern copyholds, or tenure by copy of court roll ; in which lands may be still held at the nominal will of the lord, regulated by the custom of the manor. These are sub
ject, like socage lands, to services, relief, and escheat, and also to heriots, ‘vardships, and fines upon descent and alie nation.
19. Privileged villenage, or villein sOcage, is an exalted species of copyhold tenure, upon base but certain services; subsisting only in the ancient demesnes of the crown, whence the tenure is denominated the tenure in ancient demesne. Copyholds of ancient demesnes have divers im munities annexed to their tenure, as they cannot pass by any common law conveyances, but merely by surrender, and are held by copy of court-roll, according to the custom of the manor, though not at the will of the lord. The attempt to alienate such lands in any other way than through the hands of the lord, incurs a forfeiture.
20. Frank•almoign is a tenure by spiritual services, whereby many ecclesiastical and eleemosynary corporations now hold their lands and tenements.
21. Next of the different sorts of estates. An estate of freehold, liberum tenementunz, is the actual possession oftlie soil or land, created by livery of 8eisin in common law ; and then the occupier is said to be seised in his demesne, as of fee. Freeholds are either of inheritance or for life only, and the fee or right is either absolute or limited. Tenant in fee simple absolute, is he that has lands, tenements, or hereditaments, to hold to him and his heirs for ever. An estate in fee, quaVed or base, is an estate to the holder of it and his heirs till a certain event happen, or to be defeated it' such art event occur.
22. All tenements may be entailed. The word tenement comprehends all corporeal hereditaments whatsoever, and also all incorporeal hereclitaments that savour of the reali ty ; that is, which issue out of corporeal ones, or which concern, or are annexed to, or may he exercised within the same ; as rents, estovers, commons, and the like, as also dignities and offices.