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124 L. Q. Rev. 586 (2008)
The Feudal System and the Land Registration Acts

handle is hein.journals/lqr124 and id is 590 raw text is: THE FEUDAL SYSTEM AND THE LAND REGISTRATION ACTS THE theme of this article is that the feudal system is alive and well, that there are many more cases of superior and inferior freehold estates in England and Wales than is generally recognised, that the Land Registration Act (LRA) 2002 does not deal adequately with manorial rights, and that the Act does not cater for some of the commonest instances of subinfeudation, including those created as a result of the enfranchisement of copyhold land or the enlargement of long leases as well as those surviving from before 1290, and needs amendment to enable it to do so. The fundamental principles of English land law are well known.' With the exception of the Crown's demesne land, i.e. land which has never been granted away by the Crown, the title to all land in England is regarded as derived from the Crown.2 The most that any subject can hold is an estate in the land, which since 1925 (disregarding leasehold tenures) must normally be a freehold estate in fee simple.3 The Sovereign is lord paramount; those who hold directly from him are his tenants in chief; those who stand at the bottom of the chain of freehold tenancies of the land are tenants in demesne; those who stand between the Sovereign and the tenants in demesne are mesne lords. The estate of a mesne lord is known as a seignory. Estates were granted by the Sovereign in return for services, and tenants in chief and mesne tenants in turn could grant them in return for services or a money rent; but knight service and many of the incidents of freehold tenure were abolished in 1660,4 and most tenures were converted into common socage, the incidents of which became of such little value that the relationship between the tenants in demesne and their superior lords has in most cases been lost to memory. No new seignories in fee simple can be created by grant, except by the Crown, since the statute Quia Emptores 12905: by virtue of the statute the grantee 1 See generally Megarry and Wade, Law of Real Property., 6th edn (2000), Chs 2 and 3; Cheshire and Bum, Modem Law of Real Property, 17th edn (2006), Ch.A2. 2Although it cannot be said that the redistributions (sc.by William the Conqueror) amounted to direct feudal grants, there is no doubt that they came to be regarded as such when the idea of Norman feudalism took hold of men's minds: Cheshire and Bum, Modem Law of Real Property (2006), p. 14; The King of Domesday is the supreme landlord; all the land of the nation, the old folkland, has become the King's, and all private land is held mediately or immediately of him; all holders are bound to their lords by homage and fealty, either actually demanded or understood to be demandable, in every case of transfer by inheritance or otherwise: Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol.1, p.297. 3Certain determinable fees are treated by the 1925 legislation as fees simple absolute, e.g. estates granted under the School Sites Act 1841: LPA 1925 s.7(l). The term fee simple can be found as far back as the 12th century. 4Tenures Abolition Act 1660. 5For an abbreviated version of the first chapter of the statute see Megarry and Wade, Law of Real Property (2000), p.28 fn.60. Grants in tail and for life continued to be by subinfeudation.

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