Alordship is a territory held by alord. It was a landed estate that served as the lowest administrative andjudicial unit in rural areas. It originated as a unit under thefeudal system during theMiddle Ages. In a lordship, the functions of economic and legal management are assigned to a lord, who, at the same time, is not endowed with indispensable rights and duties of thesovereign. A Lordship in its essence is clearly different from thefief and, along with theallod, is one of the ways to exercise the right.
Nulle terre sans seigneur ("No land without a lord") was afeudallegal maxim; where no other lord can be discovered,the Crown is lord aslord paramount. The principal incidents of a seignory were a feudal oath ofhomage andfealty; a"quit" or "chief" rent; a "relief" of one year's quit rent, and the right ofescheat. In return for these privileges the lord was liable to forfeit his rights if he neglected to protect and defend the tenant or did anything injurious to the feudal relation.[1]
InEngland, every seignory now existing must have been created before the statuteQuia Emptores (1290), which forbade the future creation of estates in fee-simple bysubinfeudation. The only seignories of any importance at present are thelordships of manors. They are regarded as incorporealhereditaments, and are either appendant or in gross. A seignory appendant passes with the grant of the manor; a seignory in gross—that is, a seignory which has been severed from thedemesne lands of the manor to which it was originally appendant—must be specially conveyed by deed of grant.[1]
Freehold land may be enfranchised by aconveyance of the seignory to the freehold tenant, but it does not extinguish the tenant's right of common (Baring v. Abingdon, 1892, 2 Ch. 374). By s. 3 (ii.) of the Settled Land Act 1882, the tenant for life of a manor is empowered to sell the seignory of any freehold land within the manor, and by s. 21 (v.) the purchase of the seignory of any part of settled land being freehold land, is an authorized application of capital money arising under the act.[1]
The lordships came into being as a result of the feudal system, in particular the sovereign's delegated judicial prerogative. The crown, as lord paramount, granted the right to govern and to exercise judicial authority to a crown vassal, often a confidant or as a reward for military service or political support. The crown vassal—e.g. acount orduke — thus exercised all or part of the sovereign's royal authority. In turn the crown vassal granted rights to the mesne lords.
Because afief originated out of a bond between vassal and lord for military service, vassalage was personal not heritable. With the advent of professional armies, the vassalage bond fell into disuse or was replaced byscutage; however, vassalage remained personal. One of the consequences of this was that, on the death of the vassal, the fiefescheated to the lord. The vassal's heir was able to retain theheerlijkheid through thecommendation ceremony, the process of paying homage and swearing fealty officiated at the headmanor court. The new vassal made a symbolic payment to his lord. The same ceremony was held when a manor was sold. If there was no direct descendant, other blood relatives could exercise their right oflaudatio parentum, which grants them aright of first refusal and explains how lordships were able to be kept in the same families for centuries.
The tenancy of a lordship is not to be confused with land ownership. It was anestate in land, not landper se. Although lords of the manor generally owned property within a lordship (often substantial amounts), it was possible for a lord not to own any property at all within his own lordship. Also, when agricultural land was held by a lord in the Low Countries, the amount held was smaller in comparison to other countries.
Lordship conferred a set of manorial rights.
Most German lordships weremediate, which meant that their lords and inhabitants owed allegiance to a territorial ruler — such as aduke, amargrave, acount, aprince, aprince-elector or aprince-bishop — who exercised a number of sovereign rights over them, including high justice, taxation and military conscription. However, several lordships wereimmediate, having gained that coveted status usually at some time during the Middle Ages. The lords of a small number of those immediate lordships, oftenimperial knights, eventually succeeded in having themselves raised to the status of count (Graf) or prince (Fürst) and recognized asimperial estates with a seat and vote at theImperial Diet. Seventeenth-century jurists began to designate those immediate lordships, as well as the more important territories of imperial knights asbaronia, and after them the custom was established in Germany to call themBaronie orBaronat (French:baronnie, English:barony) and their ownersbarons.[2]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Seignory".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 586.| International | |
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