History of English land law

Throughout the Early Middle Ages, where England came under rule of post-Roman chieftains and Anglo-Saxon monarchs, land was the dominant source of personal wealth.

[4] It is probable that the English land law was produced by the action of the policy adopted in the lower empire, finally developed into feudalism, upon the previously existing course of Teutonic custom.

The new king, William the Conqueror, started standardising England's feudal rules, and compiled a reference for all land and its value in the Domesday Book of 1086.

The Statute Quia Emptores Terrarum 1290 allowed alienation of land only by substitution of the title holder, halting creation of further sub-tenants.

The civil liberties of the Magna Carta of 1215, and its reissue in 1297, were only meant for barons and lords, while the vast majority of people were poor, subjugated and dispossessed.

Second, through an act of manumission lords could voluntarily grant freedom and this was increasingly done, after the plague, if the serf or a relative made a payment of money.

[9] The nobility and the King reacted to the rising bargaining power of the peasantry by fixing wages,[10] and violently suppressing any uprisings, like the Peasants' Revolt in 1381.

[13] By the time of the Norman Conquest, elements of feudalism existed in England from the rule of the Anglo-Saxon and Danish kings to the degree that it was easy to introduce it in full.

What the Norman Conquest did was not to change all at once allodial into feudal tenure, but to complete the association of territorial with personal dependence in a state of society already prepared for it.

[4] The land forfeited to the Conqueror was re-granted by him to be held by knight-service due to the king, not to the mesne lord as in European continental feudalism.

The non-free inhabitants were called in the Domesday Book servi, cotarii, or bordarii, and later nativi or villani, the last name being applied to both free men and serfs.

It was enacted by Magna Carta that a free man should not give or sell so much of his land as to leave an amount insufficient to perform his services to his lord.

[4] The influence of local custom upon the land law must have become weakened after the circuits of the judges of the King's Court were established by Henry II.

The changes which have been made since that date have been chiefly due to the action of equity and legislation, the latter sometimes interpreted by the courts in a manner very different from the intention of parliament.

The most important influence of equity has been exercised in mortgage and trusts in the doctrine of specific performance of contracts concerning real estate, and in relief from forfeiture for breach of covenant.

"... your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men and unpeople, not only villages, but towns; for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men, the abbots not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good.

They sought justice with the Lord Chancellor, and his Court of Chancery determined that the true "use" or "benefit" of the land did not belong to the person on the title (or the feoffee who held seisin).

Unlike the common law judges, the Chancellor held the cestui que use, the owner in equity, could be a different person, if this is what good conscience dictated.

King Henry VIII saw that this deprived the Crown of revenue, and so in the Statute of Uses 1535 he attempted to prohibit them, stipulating all land belonged in fact to the cestui que use.

By the early 1700s, the use had formalised into a trust:[25] where land was settled to be held by a trustee, for the benefit of another, the Courts of Chancery recognised the beneficiary as the true owner in equity.

In the reign of William IV fines and recoveries were abolished and simpler modes of conveyance substituted,[26] and the laws of inheritance and dower were amended.

[4][27][28] "As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.

The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them.

[29] As national and global trade expanded, the power of a new monied class of business men was growing, and the economic and political importance of land was diminishing with it.

The moral philosopher and father of economics, Adam Smith, reflected these changes as he argued in The Wealth of Nations that landowners' position allowed them to extract rents from others in return for very little.

After the 1906 general election the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, in his People's Budget of 1909 introduced a tax on land to force it onto the market.

2. c. 36) was relaxed in favour of gifts and sales to public institutions of various kinds, such as schools, parks and museums by the Mortmain and Charitable Uses Act 1888 (51 & 52 Vict.

In private accommodation, new rights were enacted for tenants against their landlords, with some security of tenure and rent regulation, a break on unfettered "freedom of contract".

This fact drove changes in the market for mortgage regulation, while the growing financial interest in land tended to conflict with family life.

[38] However, if banks sought to repossess homes from people who had defaulted on mortgage repayments, the courts were faced with a choice of whether to prefer those economic interests over social values.