Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
judgement_n	common_a	court_n	writ_n	1,573	5	9.1762	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54695	Tenenda non tollenda, or, The necessity of preserving tenures in capite and by knight-service which according to their first institution were, and are yet, a great part of the salus populi, and the safety and defence of the King, as well as of his people : together with a prospect of the very many mischiefs and inconveniences, which by the taking away or altering of those tenures, will inevitably happen to the King and his kingdomes / by Fabian Philipps ...	Philipps, Fabian, 1601-1690.	1660 (1660)	Wing P2019; ESTC R16070	141,615	292

and the quiet repose and peace of all mankind makes a certainty in all their actions and leads to the Mountain of Holinesse and the Hill of eternal rest and blessednesse No grinding of the face of the poor which if it were any as it can never be evinced to be could not commonly or ordinarily be in the case of such Tenures when as those which are any way concerned in it are men of good Estates and Revenues and would be loth to be under any other notion to pay a reasonabe Escuage assessed in Parliament when they went not themselves or sent any in their stead and where their Tenants went not in person to defend their Lords as well as their King to have as much assessed upon them and by no other than a Parliament wherein the Commons of England had their Representatives of their own Election Neither were the Kings of England or the Mesne Lords in the case of those Tenures any Egiptian Task-Masters when those that held under them had such benefits and bounties of free guift and if they have been since transferred and aliened that part of it viz. the Tenures and a gratefull acknowledgement of the favour of the first givers were neither sold or paid for in the purchase but the Services were by Act and operation of Law and the Statute of Quia emptores terrarum reserved to the first Donors by an expresse Covenant in the deeds of purchase to be performed to the Lords of whom they were holden and it is a maxime in Law Quod nemo plus juris in alium transferre potest quam in ipso est that no man can grant or transferre a greater right than he hath or is in him And are if a right consideration of things shall not be as it hath been too much in the times of our late Frenzies and Distractions adjudged a premunire or committing high Treason More noble Tenures than that of Soccage by how much a rustick and Plowmans life and demeanor was ever in all ages and amongst all Nations which had any civility and understanding justly accompted to be so far inferior to the Equestris ordo Gentlemen or men of more noble imployments As that those and not the military Tenures were truly accompted to be a kind of Slavery according as they were in their original Institution before the favour obtained of the King and Mesne Lords to reduce their drudgeries to easy and small quit Rents and to be but litle better than Joshuas Gibeonites Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water or Solomons Perezites and Jebusites to be imployed as his Servants and Work-men And as now they are or expect to be in that which they would imagine to be their better condition holding in free and common Soccage by fealty only for all services and being not to be excused from Aydes to make the Kings eldest Son a Knight or for the marriage of his Daughter or to pay a years value of their Lands and sometimes double the rent which is to be payed at the death of every Tenant and may amount to a great deal more than the ordinary low and favourable rate of five pounds for a releif for every Knights Fee 50 shillings for a half and 25 shillings for a quarter of a Knights Fee and lesser according to the smaller proportions of the Lands which they hold would in all likelyhood if they might but enjoy the antient and long agoe discontinued priveledge which the Tenures by Knight service in Capite were to enjoy by the Charter or Magna Charta of King H. 1. of not having Lands of that kind of Tenure which was in their own Demeasne charged with any other Assessements or services than what they were obliged unto by their Tenures And was no more than what was before the common Justice and right Reason of this nation be now very well content to exchange their free as they call it Socage Lands which was antiently understood to be no other than feudum ignobile et plebeium an ignoble and plebeian Fee or Estate and as Sr. Henry Spelman saith nobili opponitur et ignobilibus et rusticis competit nullo feudali privilegio ornatum et feudi nomen sub recenti seculo perperam et abusu rerum auspicatum est is opposed or contra distinguished to the more noble Tenures and being not entituled to any feudal priviledge belongs only to Ignoble and Rusticks and hath of late times improperly and by abuse gained the name of Fee for Lands holden in Capite and by Knight service So as they might be free from all assessements and charges of War under which burden the Owners of Lands holden by any kind of Tenures have for these last Twenty years heavily groaned and if Mr. Prynne had not publiquely and truly said it did mu●●is parasangis by many and very many degrees out goe all that was pretended to be a Grievance by the Court of Wards and Tenures in Capite and by Knight service which all things rightly considered are a more free beneficial franck and noble kind of Tenure the Mariages of the Heirs in Minority only excepted which not often happening are notwithstanding abundantly recompenced by the freenesse of the gift seldom Services and other Immunityes Then Socage which those many Tenants which hold by a certain rent of Sir Anthony Weldens Heir for Castle-Guard to the ruined Rochester Castle in Kent to pay 3 s. 4 d. nomine paenae by way of Penalty for every Tide which after the Time limited for payment shall run under Rochester Bridge and the Rent and Arrears refused though tendred the next day do not find to be the best of Tenures or so good as that of Knight Service in Capite Which is better than that which the Tenants in Cumberland and other Northern Partes do claim by a kind of inheritance and Tenant Right wherein they can be well contented to pay their Lord a thirty peny ●ine at every Alienation and a twenty peny upon the Death of an Ancestor or the death of their Lord according to the Rate of the small yearly Rent which they pay to their Lords Better then all or most kind of Estates or Tenures and better than that at will which many are well apaied with and better than those of Copyholders who if the Lords of Manours put them out of their Estates have no Remedy but by Petition to them Can have no Writ of Right-Close to command their Lords to do them Right without Delay according to the Custom of the Manour No Writ of false Judgement at the Common Law upon Judgments given in the Lords Court but to sue to the Lord by Petition nor can sue any Writ of Monstraverunt to command their Lords not to require of them other Customs or Services than they ought to do Are to pay upon their admission an uncertain Fine at the will of the Lord who if they be unreasonable the most they can be compelled unto by

never be so good or for the ease of the people as when the King by a constant and well ordered Court shall be rescued from the importunityes and necessityes of great men and preserved from the Errors which an indulgence or munificence to so many Cravers Petitioners and Pretenders as do usually throng the Courts and presence of Princes might draw or perswade them unto and the Wards and their Friends not put to seek Remedies or just Defences in their Suits or Concernments in other Courts amongst a multitude and intermixture of Causes of another nature nor to procure an accesse for their Petitions to their Kings or at their Courts or Residences where a continual assembly of all the weighty cares and emergencies in Government will inevitably inforce or necessitate delayes and notwithstanding the help of some costly Mediators and intercessors cannot nor ever could be easily got through but may in such a fixed and peculiar Court as that of the Wards Liveri●● with a small expence of time or attendance and the assistance of certain allowed Fees to proper and appointed offices which cannot be any grievance where they shall be any thing within the bounds of Reason or Moderation know how to find out and go to their proper Remedies as readily as an Apothecary can to his Boxes of Medicaments or the Physician to the experimented directions of his Books or Recipes and were sure to be heard and have redresse in a Court of Justice guided and governed by wise and good men who being as great as they were good were fenced and compassed about with comprehensive and restraining Oaths enjoyning all manner of right and forbidding the least of Injustice and wrong to be done unto the People Preserved the estates inheritance and evidences of the Wards guarded and rescued the estates of Lunatiques and Ideots from those that would deceive them helped the Wards in the discovery and recovery of their debts and rights rescued them from all wrongs enjoyned and prohibited other Courts from any cognizance or determination of their concernments except when a Will was to be proved or an Administration granted or the like to or for the use and benefit of a Ward and committed the education of such whose Fathers dyed Papists so to Protestants as many and amongst them some Earls and Nobility have by the direction of the King and the care of that Court been put under the Tuition of some Bishops and thereby become Protestants and their Posterities fastened in that Religion most of which cares of that Court and benefits received by the people could not be at all or not so well had and enjoyed when there was no Court which besides the pr●venting and punishing of stoln marriages and many other benefits not here mentioned may notwithstanding some deviations and irregularities which have been committed by some Officers and Clarks which may easily be remedied be as useful as other of the great Courts in Westminster-Hall which were not dissolved or put down in the reign of King E. 1. because all the Judges of the Kings Bench common Pleas and Exchequer except John de Metingham and Elias de Beckingham were by judgment of Parliament found guilty and grievously Fined for Briberies extortions oppressions and other great misdemeanors but to the great good and comfort of the people and nation have as before those offences committed by some of their Judges in the absence of the King in Gasconie ever since continued as great Magazines of Justice and the Asylums or Sanctuaries of all that are distressed So as no Serpent for ought ever appears lurked under that green grasse nor any Crocodile nourished or bathed himself in those wholesome waters laid not his eggs in the Sand of our Estates or Properties assaulted not the innocent Passenger nor spoiled our Flocks of Sheep or herds of Cattle and a Marvail or wonder it may therefore be that so good so necessary and so beneficial an Institution should have any Innate or original evil or grievance in it and the quaerulous humour of the vulgar who like a herd of Swine do too often cry when one of many of them is but justly pinched or wrung by the ear for his unjust Trespassings or as those irrational Guards of the night do use to howl or bark because one of their kind half a mile off torments himself in a Moon-light night in barking at his own or any other shaddow should never stuffe out or enlarge their complaints against that which was accounted to be no grievance in Edward the Confessors time whose memory was and is yet like the Nard or Spices of the East and his Laws so venerable as our English fore-fathers could in the loss and ruines of their Country hide them under his shrine at Westminster and thought themselves happy when as with Tears and Importunities they obtained of William the Conquerour to be restored to them and left them as rich Heir-looms and a precious Legacy to their Posterity who got the care and observation of them to be afterwards inserted into the Coronation-Oath of the succeeding Kings of England And could no way be suspected not to be highly contented with them when as they were Leges propriae Laws of their own Country consuetudines antiquae in quibus vixerant Patres ●orum ipsi in eis nati nutriti fuerunt and the antient Customs in which their fore-fathers were born or bred up in not collected or put together by incertain reports partial or doubtful upon reasonlesse traditions or hear-says of an afflicted trembling or affrighted degenerate people under the sense and miseries of a late Forreign Conquest but per praeceptum Regis Wil●elmi electi sunt de singulis totius Angliae Comitatibus 12 viri sapie●tiores quibus jurejurando injunctum fuit coram Rege Gulielmo ut quoad possent tramite neque ad dextram neque ad sinistram declinantes legum suarum consuetudinum sancita patefacerent nil praetermittentes nil addentes nil praevaricando mutantes orderly and judicially inquired and sought out by a fair and just election of twelve of the wisest men of every County in England by virtue of King William the Conquerours Writs or Commission to whom being brought into the Kings presence they were injoyned by oath that as much as possibly they could they should have a care to do right and neither incline to the right hand nor to the left without any omission addition collusion or deceit should certifie their legal Customs which being done and written out by the Kings command by the proper hand-writing of Aldered Arch-Bishop of York and Hugh Bishop of London were by the King ratified by his Proclamation and made perpetual per totum Regnum Angliae inviolabiliter tenendas sub paenis gravissimis Throughout all England under grievous penalties to be observed and kept And so approved by the people as about 70 years after the Citizens of London as the continuation of Florence

any Court or Rule of Justice is a reasonable Fine commonly adjudged or estimated at two years value and either certain or uncertain are to be paid at the death or alienation of every Tenant which doe as in Socage happen more often and constantly than that of Escuage and Knight Service and have many Payments Forfeitures Restraints and Dependencyes attending that kind of Estate and Inheritance as in some places the Heir to forfeit his Land if after three Solemn Proclamations in three several Courts he comes not in payes his Fine and prayes to be admitted or shall without any reasonable cause of absence wilfully refuse to appear after summons at his Lords Court Baron or to be sworn of the homage or denie himself to be a Coppy-holder payeth not his Fine when it is assessed or sues a Replevin against his Lord distraining for Rent-service payes not his Rent or permits or commits voluntary wast by plucking down an antient built house and building up a new in the place or cutting Timber without licence may be fined or amerced if he speak unreverently of his Lord or behave himself contemptuously towards him is at his Death to pay his best beast or if he hath none the best peice of his housholdstuffe for a herriot and in some places for it varies according to several customes is to give the Lord a certain sum of mony every month during Wars to bear his charges cannot be sworn of the Homage or bring a plaint in the nature of an Assize untill he be admitted Tenant to his Land the Wife shall not have her Bench or Life in her Husbands Copyhold Estate if she marry without Licence of the Lord and in some places if she will redeem it must come riding into the Court upon a ●lack Ram or as in the manner of South Peve●ton in Somersetshire being an an●ient D●mesne where a Widdow convicted of Fornication shall as an Escheat to the Lord of the Mannor forfeit all her Lands and Goods and the Tenant is by a peculiar custom in some places before he can inforce his Lord to admit any one to his Coppyhold to make a prosf●r thereof to the next of the blood or to his Neighbours ab orientesole inhabiting Eastward of him who giving as much as another is to have it and many more inconveniencies and unpleasing customes not here remembred which they who in the Raign of H. 3. and E. 1. Or when Bracton and Fleta wrote were but Tenants at the will of the Lord and by an accustomed and continued charity fixed and setled upon them and their Heirs are now become to be the owners of a profitable and well to be liked inheritance secundum consuetudinem manerij according to the custome of the Mannor could never by any manner of Reason or Justice require a better usage o● find the way to complain of untill our late horrid and irrational Confusions when Injustice accused Iustice Oppression complained of Right● and the wickedest o● Gains was called the refined Godlinesse and when they got so much incouragement as in the height of a grand and superlative ingratitude to cry aloud and clamour against their Lords who were nothing else but their good and great Benefactors and would make as many as they could beleive that their Coppyhold Estates which were great Acts of Charity in the time of the Saxons were now nothing lesse than Norman Slaveries Are better also than Estates for lives or years which are not unless in case of a seldome happening minority which is otherwise recompenced so happy in their conditions as Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service but are more clogged and incumbred with Covenants or operation of Law then Knight Service as the Tenant to be punished with treble dammage and a forfeiture of Locum vastatum the place wasted for wast committed or permitted to be done in but cutting down an Apple tree in an Orchard or a few Willows or other Trees that grow about the House or plowing up land that was not arrable cannot Assigne his Term or make a Lease of part of it or cut down Timber of Wood without leave of his Lord is stinted to his fewel or firewood and to have so many Loads only to burn is not to carry any dung of the ground is to forfeit his Lease if he pay not his Rent if demanded at the time appointed and many times strict Nomine Penaes for every day after in which it shall be unpaid must carry so many loads of Wood or Coal every year for his Land-lord pay quarters of Wheat Rent Capons a Boar or Brawn a Mutton or fat Calf and the like renewing thereby again the old kind of Socage by their own Covenants or for their own conveniency agreeing to find so many men furnished with Pikes or Musquets in the service of their Land-lords in the time of Wars which was not long agoe done in Ireland by some Tenants of the late Lord Conway which is no lesse then a Military Tenure Wardships and Marriage only expected And whether for lives or years doe live under as many other harsh and uncomfortable Covenants and Conditions as the warinesse distrust or griping of their Land-lords will put or enforce upon them which he that hath not the property of the Land which he renteth and knows it to be none of his own is to endure the more patiently because if he will not take it or hold it so another will be glad to do it and that Covenants and Obligations which were at first but voluntatis at the Tenants will and pleasure before they were entered into do afterwards as the Civil Law saith become to be necessitatis and cannot be avoyded So as Tenures in Capite and Knight service being more beneficial and most commonly less troublesome and incumbred than either Socage or Copyhold Tenures or Estates for lives or years which are more than two parts of three of the Lands of the Kingdom and are yet well enough endured purchased and daily sought for and when all is said that can be truly and rationally alleadged for any good that is in them that in Capite and by Knight service being the most noble and best of Tenures will weigh heavier in the ballance of any reasonable impartial or knowing mans understanding it cannot be imagined from which of the many points of the compasse or Card of the vulgar and unruly apprehensions the Wind or Heri●an of the complaints can come which are made against them unless any should be so bruitish as to think the payments of Rent to their Land-Lords or the performing of their oaths when they make Fealty or their Covenants Promises or Contracts are a grievance And therefore until upon any account of truth or reason a just and more than ordinary care of the King shall be reckoned to be a Curse Favour a Fault Protection a Persecution Benefits shall be taken for Burdens Blessings for Bondage performance of promises a Sin and compelling of them an