History of Land Tenure in England

History Of Land Tenure In England
10th -13th century

Following the Norman Conquest in 1066 all the land of England was technically owned by the
Crown. Under the feudal manorial system which subsequently developed, the Crown made
grants of land to earls and barons who in turn granted smaller areas to knights in return for the
provision of a set period of active military service in the field called ‘knight service’. Over the
years money payment ‘scutage’ replaced knight services.
Someone who held land in this way direct from the Crown was a ‘tenant-in-chief’ and if a
tenant-in-chief held several villages he might sublet one or more of them to other men in
return for similar services. Estates that had been no more than a farm or an agricultural unit
thus became a jurisdiction, the lord being responsible for the good behaviour of his tenants.
15th -17th century

The lord of the manor usually had two courts, a court leet which dealt with petty law and order
matters and a court baron which dealt with land leased from the manor by copyhold (i.e. a
copy of the entry of the court rolls) by 1500, become the copyholders of the manor. but due to
a slow process of sale and enclosure of land, and a transition from tenant service to monetary
payments of rent or for a lease, the importance of the manor had greatly diminished by the
early seventeenth century.
the usual method of transferring freehold land was by ‘livery of seisin’, a symbolic act of
transfer of a piece of the property, usually a turf or clod of earth, witnessed by the community.
The copyholder would similarly deliver a rod or wand to the lord of the manor or his steward
who would pass it to the new tenant. No writing at all was strictly necessary, but it became
common to provide evidence of these transactions by means of a deed of feoffment
(possession) or, in the case of copyhold, by an entry on the court rolls. It was difficult to escape
the fees payable to the feudal lord following such a public act and so, prior to 1660, people
regularly looked for ways in which land might be conveyed secretly though it was also
important, by some means or other, to place on record a ‘title’ to any property obtained.
18th -19th century

The legal documents that proved a person’s ownership and/or rights to land in England or
Wales came to be called their title deeds. Anyone selling, mortgaging or transferring land to
another person or institution transferred with it the title deed(s) by which he or she had first
acquired that land. Over the years, a growing chain of documentation was thus built up that
was produced and transferred at each sale or mortgage of the property. A typical bundle of title
deeds would consist of former conveyances, deeds of bargain and sale, copies of entries on
manor rolls, probate copies of wills, marriage settlements, mortgages, perhaps a summary of
the most important records called an ‘abstract’ of title, and sometimes other miscellaneous
papers that might include earlier descriptive sale particulars of the property or auctioneers
catalogues.
It was the lack of evidence of land transactions in the seventeenth century and the
problem of raising money on land that led eventually to the foundation of the modern
Land Registry (in 1899). The first of many Bills to create a national registry was
introduced as early as 1649, but without success.
The actual Register gives, apart from the Title Plan showing the extent of the registered
land, a bare minimum of detail, set out on a page in three sections:
(1) The Property Register identifies ‘the geographical location and extent of the
registered property by means of a short verbal description’ which means that it gives its
address. To this may be added a note of any rights which may benefit the land, such as
a right of way over adjoining land. For leaseholds, brief details of the lease are given.
(2) The Proprietorship Register specifies the quality of the title, whether it is
absolute or not, gives the owner’s name and address, and states whether there are any
restrictions on his or her power to sell or mortgage the property.
(3) The Charges Register records any mortgage on the property and any other rights
and interests to which it is subject, such as leases, rights of way or covenants,
restricting its use.
In 1925 an Act of Parliament decided that those to whom property had been conveyed within
the last thirty years did not in future need to provide evidence of their title going back more
than thirty years. For many properties these bundles of title deeds, many stretching back
hundreds of years, were thus overnight made redundant for all practical purposes.
Important date types of records
All transfer of freehold land had to be enrolled;

1535
Staute of enrollment
1550 Manorial maps
1574 County maps
1500s (late) - late 1900s Estate Maps
1600 (early) - 1845 Lease and Release
Land Registry compulsory
1891
Landmarks in the Conveyancing of land in England

Staute of enrollment
In 1535 the Statute of Enrollments required that the transfer of freehold land should be by
deed and that these deeds be enrolled either in one of the Courts at Westminster, such as
Chancery or Kings Bench, or with the Clerk of the Peace of the appropriate county in Quarter
Sessions. Town corporations which had their own courts of record were exempted. Title deeds
now often took the form of straightforward deeds of bargain and sale.
Lease and Release

The obligation to enroll a deed was to a very large extent circumvented by simply granting a
lease for a year on the land you wished to sell and then on the following day giving or
‘conveying’ the lessee the right of future possession (the ‘reversion’) of the land mentioned in
the lease. These two documents together were called a ‘lease and release’. This form of
conveyance became popular and remained so until 1845, but the lease did not need to be
registered and was not enrolled.

History of Land Tenure in England

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History of Land Tenure in England

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History Of Land Tenure In England

10th -13th century

15th -17th century

18th -19th century

Important date types of records

All transfer of freehold land had to be enrolled;

Landmarks in the Conveyancing of land in England

Lease and Release

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