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4 - Grants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2010

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Summary

Any study of early grants is subject to confusion. One cause is their diversity: the royal control which so quickly standardised litigation was slower to eliminate variations between customary arrangements, and a transaction unthinkable in Northamptonshire may have been commonplace in Norfolk. Another is the uneven survival of evidence. The grants most systematically preserved were those made by fine and those involving religious houses, and inferences may not apply to private grants between laymen. But the greatest difficulties are in our own minds. A modern deed of grant is the actual disposition; and if we remember livery of seisin at all, it is as a formality to be evaded. But charters were evidence, and the actual grant was made in a context not recorded, commonly, it seems, in a court. This links with the most intractable of our assumptions. We suppose a once-for-ever transfer of something like ownership; and whether or not the grantee can likewise pass that ownership on by his own voluntary act, we see it as passing on his death to his heir as by a modern rule of intestate succession. Conveyance, inheritance, litigation: for us these are distinct processes transferring or determining abstract rights. The ancient reality, preserved into later times only in the formalities of copyhold, saw all three as preliminaries to what mattered: the lord's acceptance of this tenant.

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The Legal Framework of English Feudalism
The Maitland Lectures given in 1972
, pp. 103 - 153
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1976

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  • Grants
  • S.F.C. Milsom
  • Book: The Legal Framework of English Feudalism
  • Online publication: 04 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511561245.005
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  • Grants
  • S.F.C. Milsom
  • Book: The Legal Framework of English Feudalism
  • Online publication: 04 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511561245.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Grants
  • S.F.C. Milsom
  • Book: The Legal Framework of English Feudalism
  • Online publication: 04 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511561245.005
Available formats
×