ALLO'DIUM, or ALLODIAL TENURE (Med. Lat. probably from 0. H. G. al, all + prop erty, estate). The free and absolute right of property in land, properly opposed to feudal ten ure (q.v.), or the holding of land in subordina tion to a superior owner. Blackstone is responsi ble for the view, which has been generally taken by legal writers of the last century, that a con dition of allodial land holding prevailed in Eng land prior to the Norman Conquest, and that this was rapidly superseded by the introduc tion of the feudal system of land tenure by the Conqueror and his immediate successors, whence Lord Coke's statement that there "is no land in England in the hands of any subject but it is held of some lord by some kind of se•riee." There can be no question as to the universality of feudal tenure, as described by Coke; but it may be doubted whether, in our legal system, the flee and unqualified ownership of land—corre sponding to the title by which goods and chattels are held—has ever been generally recognized. It is more than probable that from the first the idea of ownership underwent a change when it was transferred from cattle and other personal property to land, and that the owner of land was generally conceived of as having a more or less temporary interest, as holding in subordina tion to the superior rights of the community, was somehow regarded as the ultimate and permanent owner. However this may be, we do not find in the books any general recognition of allodial ownership, in the strict sense of the term, anywhere in Europe; and the rapidity with which the feudal system spread over England after the Conquest would seem to indicate lhat among the Anglo-Saxons such absolute ownership of land was the exception rather than the rule.
The terms alod and allodium do, indeed, occur with some frequency, hut usually in a derivative sense, to describe lands which, though held in some form of dependent tenure, are in heritable and thus similar to the modern estate in fee simple. Since the decay of the feudal system in England and its general abolition' in the United States, the term "allo dial" has come to be applied to the common form of land tenure in subordination to the para mount title of the State, which now commonly prevails, and which, though not entirely free and absolute, has been divested of all the burdensome incidents which were characteristic of feudal tenure. Some of our State constitutions and many of our statutes have expressly declared all tenures to be allodial, in this sense of the term, and in most of the States they are, in the ab sence of legislation on the subject, deemed to be so. In several of the States, however, tenures partaking more or less of the feudal character still survive. Consult the authorities referred to under REAL PROPERTY.