A TREATISE ON COPY HOL D S. 2617 BY CHARLES WATKINS, OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, ESQ. BARRISTER AT LAW, AUTHOR OF AN ESSAY ON THE LAW OF DESCENTS, ETC. ETC. THE SECOND EDITION, Corrected and much enlarged from the Author's Papers: And further augmented, with Notes of all the more recently adjudged Cases on the Subject, down to the present Period, BY ROBERT STUDLEY VIDAL, OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, ESQ. F. S. A.-THE AUTHOR'S EXECUTOR. To this Edition is also added an Appendix of Manorial Customs, &c. VOL. II. LONDON: PRINTED FOR W. CLARKE AND SONS, LAW BOOKSELLERS, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN'S INN. 1816. THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE Author is at length enabled to fulfil his intention of giving a second volume of a Treatise on Copyholds. The first, indeed, was, so far as he was empowered to make it, complete in itself: it embraced the law relative to the NATURE, CREATION, TRANSFER, AND DESTRUCTION, OF COPYHOLD INTERESTS. There remained, however, subjects which he considered as necessary to be treated of under the learning of copyholds, but which could not, with any propriety, be sufficiently investigated in that volume, without deranging the plan of the work and destroying the connection which he wished to preserve. In the present volume, therefore, he has treated. of the CUSTOMARY COURT, of CUSTOMS, of FREEBENCH and of CURTESY, of GUARDIANSHIP, of LICENSE, of HERIOTS, of SUIT, of RENT, of CORPORAL SERVICES, and of THE APPLICATION OF THE STATUTE-LAW то COPYHOLD PROPERTY. VOL. II. He He has pursued the same method in the present, as he pursued in the former volume. He has been brief; and, where the subject permitted him, he has endeavoured to extract consistency. This he found, however, was not always even to be hoped for. He found reporter against reporter, and case against case. found consequences continue when their causes had ceased. He found conclusions, which justly followed from premises which once existed, applied to instances in which those premises could not exist. He found arbitrary assertion adopted by servility, cherished by prejudice, and at length matured into doctrines whose law could not be questioned, but whose absurdity was too apparent to be denied. It must not therefore be wondered at, if, when so situated, he has, in some instances, left the law in all its glorious uncertainty: and to such uncertainty must it always be subject, while we consider common-sense as subservient to precedent, and suffer the blunders of one age to be the criteria of right in another. Much still remains for investigation. Our laws of property are so connected with each other, that some relation to the doctrine of copyholds may be traced in most of them. What, however, may be deemed necessary to a system of copyhold law which is not treated of in these volumes, the Author must leave to those who have better health, and are better calculated for the undertaking, than himself." Much, too, may be expected which did not belong to him to perform. It has even been intimated to him, that the law relative to COURTSLEET was expected: but he must beg leave to say once more that he was writing on the law of COPYHOLDS; and surely the law of courts-leet formed no part of that law. He might as well have given a dissertation upon thunder, or upon the seat of the soul. He has sometimes, indeed; incidentally noticed the laws relative to freehold, when treating of those relative to copy hold property; but it was only by way of illustration, or because they could not be separated. In order to render the work more generally useful and more easy to be consulted, the Author has incorporated the Index to the Cases into one alphabet; as he has also done with the general Index. In the conclusion of his preface to the preceding volume, he intimated that, as the present |