The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. Frederic William Maitland

of the exchequer who do their service by deputy.¹⁷⁴ We observe that all these offices, if we regard only their titles, have something menial about them, in the old and proper sense of the word “menial”; their duties are servitia mansionalia, they are connected with the king’s household. It may be long since the predecessors in title of these men really cooked the king’s dinner or groomed the king’s horses: but they glory in titles which imply, or have implied, that their duties are of this menial kind; nor is it always easy to say when or whether the duty has become honorary. When the Conqueror gives half a hide of land in Gloucestershire to his cook,¹⁷⁵ it were bold to say that this tenant did not really roast and boil; and what shall we say of the cook of the Count of Boulogne?¹⁷⁶ Then scattered about England we find many men who are said to hold by serjeanty and are bound by their tenure to do other services, which are not so distinctly menial, that is to say, are not so closely connected with the king’s household. They are bound to carry the king’s letters, to act as the king’s summoners when the barons of the neighbourhood are to be summoned, to aid in conveying the king’s treasure from place to place, or the [p.264] like. Again, and this is very common, theirs is some serjeanty of the forest, they are chief foresters, or under foresters. The king’s sport has given rise to numerous serjeanties; men are bound by tenure to keep hounds and hawks for him, to find arrows for him when he goes a-shooting; and we cannot say that these are honorary or particularly honourable services: to find a truss of straw for the king’s outer chamber when he stays at Cambridge, this also is a serjeanty.¹⁷⁷ The carpenter, the mason, or the gardener who holds land in the neighbourhood of some royal castle in return for his work holds a serjeanty.¹⁷⁸ But, again, many serjeanties are connected with warfare. The commonest of all is that of finding a servant or serjeant (servientem) to do duty as a soldier in the king’s army. Sometimes he is to be a foot-soldier, sometimes a horse-soldier (servientem peditem, servientem equitem); often the nature of the arms that he is to bear is prescribed; often he is bound to serve for forty days and no more, sometimes only for a shorter period; often to serve only against the Welsh, sometimes to serve only within his own county. It would be a mistake to think that tenure supplied the king only with knights or fully armed horsemen; it supplied [p.265] him also with a force, though probably a small force, of light horse-men and infantry, of bowmen and cross-bowmen. It supplied him also with captains and standard-bearers for the national militia; men were bound by their tenure to lead the infantry of particular hundreds.¹⁷⁹ It supplied him also with the means of military transport, with a baggage train; few serjeanties seem commoner than that of sending a “serjeant” with horse, sack and buckle for the carriage of armour and the like.¹⁸⁰ It supplied him, to some small degree, with munitions of war; if one was bound by tenure to find lances, arrows or knives, this was reckoned a serjeanty.

Serjeanty of mesne lords.A man may well hold by serjeanty of a mesne lord. Bracton speaks clearly on this point. The tenant of a mesne lord may be enfeoffed by serjeanty, and the serjeanty may be one which concerns the lord, or one which concerns the king. Thus, for example, he may be enfeoffed as a “rodknight” bound to ride with his lord, or he may be bound to hold the lord’s pleas, that is, to act as president in the lord’s court, or to carry the lord’s letters, or to feed his hounds, or to find bows and arrows, or to carry them: we cannot enumerate the various possible serjeanties of this class. But there are, says Bracton, other serjeanties which concern the king and the defence of the realm, even though the tenant holds of a mesne lord; as if he be enfeoffed by the serjeanty of finding so many horse- or foot-soldiers with armour of such or such a kind, or of finding a man with horse, sack and buckle for service in the army.¹⁸¹

      Types of serjeanty owed to mesne lords.All this is fully borne out by numerous examples. The grand serjeanties [p.266] of the king’s household were represented in the economy of lower lords. Thus John of Fletton held land at Fletton in Huntingdonshire by the service of being steward in the abbot’s hall at Peterborough;¹⁸² at Cottesford in Oxfordshire John White is bound by tenure to hold the lord’s court twice a year;¹⁸³ in the same county a tenant of the Earl of Lincoln must place the last dish before the earl, and shall have a rod from the earl like other free serjeants.¹⁸⁴ The Abbot of Gloucester has tenants who spread his table, who hold towels and pour water on his hands.¹⁸⁵ In the twelfth century the stewardship of the Abbey of St. Edmunds was hereditary in the family of Hastings, but was executed by deputy.¹⁸⁶ On the whole, however, the prelates and barons seem to have followed the policy of their royal master and seldom permitted substantial power to lapse into the hands of hereditary officers; the high steward of a monastery, like the high steward of the realm, was a man for pageants rather than for business.¹⁸⁷ Still such serjeanties existed. The service of carrying the lord’s letters was not uncommon and may have been very useful;¹⁸⁸ the service of looking after the lord’s wood was reckoned a serjeanty.¹⁸⁹ In various parts of England we find a considerable class of tenants bound to go a-riding with their lords or on their lord’s errands, and doubtless, as Bracton suggests, we have here the radchenistres and radmanni of Domesday Book;¹⁹⁰ on some estates they are known as “esquires,” and their tenure is a “serjeanty of esquiry.”¹⁹¹

Military serjeanties held of mesne lords.But again, there may, as Bracton says, be warlike service to be done. A tenant, for example, of the Abbot of Ramsey is bound to find horse, sumpter saddle, sack and fastening pin to carry the [p.267] harness of the knights bound for the Welsh war;¹⁹² the prior of St. Botolph at Colchester is bound to the same service by mesne tenure.¹⁹³ Again, the tenant may go to the war in his lord’s train to fight, not as a miles but as a serviens; Reginald de Bracy is bound by the service of serjeanty to follow William de Barentin as a serviens at William’s cost.¹⁹⁴

Essence of serjeanty.Now it may be impossible to bring all these very miscellaneous tenures under one definition which shall include them, but exclude knight’s service and socage. However, the central notion seems what we may call “servantship”; we cannot say “service,” for that word is used to cover every possible return which one man can make to another for the right of enjoying land. Obviously in many cases the tenant by serjeanty not only owes “service” in this large sense, but is a servant (serviens); he is steward, marshal, constable, chamberlain, usher, cook, forester, falconer, dog keeper, messenger, esquire; he is more or less of a menial servant bound to obey orders within the scope of his employment. Modern efforts to define a “servant” may illustrate old difficulties as to the limits of “serjeanty”; it may be hard to draw the line between the duty of habitually looking after the king’s bed-chamber and that of providing him with litter when he comes to a particular manor. But the notion of servantship, free servantship, as opposed to any form of serfdom, seems to be the notion which brings the various serjeanties under one class name, and it points to one of the various sources of what in the largest sense of the term we call the feudal system. One of the tributaries which swells the feudal stream is that of menial service; it meets and mingles with other streams, and in England the intermixture is soon very perfect; still we can see that serjeanty has come from one quarter, knight’s service from another, socage from yet a third, and we may understand how, but for the unifying, generalizing action of our king’s court, a special law of serjeanty might have grown up, distinct from the ordinary law of land tenure.¹⁹⁵

[p.268] As regards the military serjeanties we must remember that in the language of military affairs serviens had acquired a distinct meaning.The serjeants in the army. An army is largely made up of milites and servientes, of fully armed horsemen, and of men who, whether they serve on foot or on horse, have not the full knightly panoply.¹⁹⁶ Now when a tenant by serjeanty is bound to go to the war as a serviens with horse, purpoint, iron cap and lance, the difference between his tenure and knight’s service seems to resolve itself into a mere difference between one kind of armour and another, or one position