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Tenants of the barons received under-tenants on condition of their rendering them similar services to those which they themselves rendered to their lords; and the baronage, while duly receiving the services in compensation for which they had originally granted their lands in fee, saw with jealousy the feudal profits of these new under-tenants, the profits of wardships or of reliefs and the like, in a word the whole increase in the value of the estate consequent on its subdivision and higher cultivation, passing into other hands than their own.
The tenures of wards and liveries had long been regarded as a grievous burden by the nobility and gentry: several attempts had been made during the reign of James to purchase this prerogative, together with that of purveyance: and two hundred thousand pounds a year had been offered that prince in lieu of them; wardships and purveyance had been utterly abolished by the republican parliament; and even in the present parliament before the king arrived in England, a bill had been introduced offering him a compensation for the emolument of these prerogatives.
Hot words passed between the indignant Hubert and Peter des Roches, and the conference broke up in confusion. The barons still remained mutinous, and, while the king held his Christmas court at Northampton, they celebrated the feast at Leicester. At last Langton persuaded both parties to come to an agreement on the basis of king's friends and barons alike surrendering their castles and wardships.
They were content, even in this plenitude of power, to depart from some articles of Henry I.s charter, which they made the foundation of their demands, particularly from the abolition of wardships, a matter of the greatest importance; and they seem to have been sufficiently careful not to diminish too far the power and revenue of the crown.
It had a wider importance as a step in the development of Edward's anti-feudal policy, and may be regarded as a counterpart of the inquest into franchises, and as a means of protecting the State as well as of disciplining the Church. A corporation never died, and never paid reliefs or wardships.
Complaints had arisen that the Jews, by purchase, or probably foreclosure of mortgage, might become possessed of all the rights of lords of manors, escheat wardships, even of presentation to churches. They might hold entire baronies with all their appurtenances. The whole was swept away by one remorseless clause.
Formerly they had wardships, courts of justice, now they have the district council not in the form of bribes, but in the form of unearned salary," he said, as hotly as though someone of those present had opposed his opinion. "Aha! You're in a new phase again, I see a conservative," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "However, we can go into that later." "Yes, later.
* Journ. 2d, 11th December; 5th March, 1606. Parliament. Hist. vol. v. p. 247. Kennet, p. 681. But the business which chiefly occupied the commons during this session, was the abolition of wardships and purveyance; prerogatives which had been more or less touched on every session during the whole reign of James.
Towards this, the existing sources of revenue, with the deduction of the Feudal dues and wardships, which it was proposed to abolish, would not contribute more than one-half, or £600,000. The remaining half was to be supplied from Excise a new device, as we have seen, contrived by Parliament during the Civil War, and destined, as Hyde foresaw, to become a permanency.
But, in the complicated state of society brought about by feudalism, the inferior lord was taxed by his superior, a system that ran down the whole feudal scale, and it would take a lawyer to explain aids, talliages, wardships, fines for alienation, seizins, rents, escheats, and finally forfeiture, the heaviest and most common of all in England.
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