Heriot, from Old English heregeat ("war-gear"), was originally a death-duty in late Anglo-Saxon England, which required that at death, a nobleman provided to his king a given set of military equipment, often including horses, swords, shields, spears and helmets.
[citation needed] By the 13th century the payment was made either in money or in kind by handing over the best beast or chattel of the tenant.
[1] The enlightened cleric Jacques de Vitry called lords who imposed heriots "vultures that prey upon death... worms feeding upon the corpse."
G. G. Coulton reports a curious case of heriot in modern times: In the later 19th century Lord Rothschild bought an estate of which part was copyhold under New College, Oxford.
The Warden and Fellows, therefore, were in that respect his lords, and he had to redeem the freehold in all haste lest, at his death, these overlords should claim as a heriot his best beast which, in the case of so distinguished a racing man as Rothschild, might have been worth twenty thousand pounds or more.