Tenure

Tenure signifies the holding of lands or tenements of some superior, and which in feudal times was the leading characteristic of real property. The sovereign, who was at once the source of property and the fountain of justice and honour, had bestowed large territories on tho great barons who immediately surrounded the throne, and these again had distributed his bounty through the channels of their numerous dependents. In legal contemplation at least all the landowners of the kingdom thus derived their estates. On this foundation the system known as the feudal system as based - a system which linked every feudatory by a chain more or less extended to the Crown, and rendered his fief ultimately liable to resumption by the sovereign power from which it had, or was assnmed to have, originally emanated. The nature of the tenure was characterised by appropriate terms. [FEUDAL SYSTEM.]