United States or Laos ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The possession of the under-tenants, or occupiers, who were upon the land when the process commenced, should, for this purpose, be treated as the possession of the lessee."
'Next in dignity to the laird is the tacksman; a large taker or leaseholder of land, of which he keeps part as a domain in his own hand, and lets part to under-tenants. The tacksman is necessarily a man capable of securing to the laird the whole rent, and is commonly a collateral relation. Johnson's Works, ix. 82. A lettre de cachet. Ante, p. 159.
Jason set the land, as soon as his lease was sealed, to under-tenants, to make the rent, and got two hundred a year profit rent; which was little enough considering his long agency. He bought the land at twelve years' purchase two years afterwards, when Sir Condy was pushed for money on an execution, and was at the same time allowed for his improvements thereon.
A yet wiser measure struck at the very root of feudalism. When the larger holdings were divided by their owners into smaller sub-tenancies, the under-tenants were bound by the same conditions of service to their lord as he to the Crown.
The seizure of provisions, the exaction of forced labour, by royal officers was forbidden; and the abuses of the forest system were checked by a clause which disafforested all forests made in John's reign. The under-tenants were protected against all lawless exactions of their lords in precisely the same terms as these were protected against the lawless exactions of the Crown.
Of us, however, he neither could nor did know anything, for we were under-tenants, our immediate landlord being no less a person than Hugh Traynor, then so famous for the distillation, sub rosa, of exquisite mountain dew, and to whom the reader will find allusions made in that capacity more than once in the following volume.
He caused under-tenants to be bound to their lords by the same conditions of service which bound the lords to the crown, to which each sub-tenant swore direct fealty. William also strengthened his position as king by means of a new military organization and by his control of the judicial and administrative systems of the kingdom.
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.
Sometimes a nation is invaded and subdued; and the conquerors seize the lands, and make the natives their under-tenants or servants. Colonies have been always planted where the natives were driven out or destroyed, or the land uncultivated and waste.
The necessity, however, of providing for myself, and the hopeless perplexities of my nominal office, between head-landlords, under-tenants, trustees, a receiver, and all the endless machinery of an embarrassed little Irish estate, compelled me to seek a more quiet sphere; and in Kilkenny I found all that could combine to encourage me in the pursuit of honest independence in the way of usefulness.
Word Of The Day