Re: Ceremonies of property transfer

[clevin@rci.ripco.com (Craig Levin)]

Poster: clevin@rci.ripco.com (Craig Levin)


> Please help me puzzle this through.  The good Pedro de Alcazar said, go to 
> Littleton, and look at the chapter on fealty, not on homage.

Hey, I'm just zis guy, you know?

> But, of course, one can hardly stop reading just because the chapter 
> changes, and so I've found text as follows:
> "Sec. 90.  Note, none shall do homage but such as have an estate in fee 
> simple, or fee tail, in his own right, or in the right of another.  For it 
> is a maxim in law, that he which hath an estate but for term of life shall 
> neither do homage nor take homage."

Well, since a corporation is, in principle, immortal, the land
enters mortmain, just as it would if it entered into the holdings
of the church. I think frankalmoign might be appropriate here.

> This looks promising, since the estate we are trying to create here is a fee 
> simple.  But the ceremony for making homage would probably be hard to "sell" 
> to the Mayor and the various recipients (Chancellor, CEO and college 
> president) involved:
> 
> "Sec. 85.  [Inter alia] when the tenant shall make homage to his lord, he 
> shall be ungirt [is this "disarmed?"] and his head uncovered, and his lord 
		  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ - Yes.

> Lord Pedro de Alcazar having kindly provided the details of the ceremony of 
> fealty, I shan't repeat them; I just want to confirm that, in spite of what 
> Littleton says about the fee simple, fealty and not homage is what's wanted 
> here.

It's a far simpler and less humiliating ceremony, in modern
lights, anyway.

> However, I do think I've figured out the role of the clump of dirt; it's 
> part of the requirement of  "livery of seisin."   I quote from Walker, 
> Estates with Respect to Duration (1846) [property law doesn't change really 
> fast... we're still studying medieval law in school, and this is from my own 
> first-year textbook]:

Hey, that's why mediaevalists are still getting paid.

-- 
http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~clevin/index.html 
clevin@ripco.com
Craig Levin
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