Rent

n. The periodical compensation or pecuniary return made by a tenant to his landlord, for the enjoyment of the property held. In modern times, rent is generally reserved in money; but this is no part rents known in earlier English law; viz., rent-service, rent-charge, and rent-seek. Rent-service consisted of fealty and a certain rent; and this is said to have been the only kind of rentorigiiial'y known to the common law: it was called rent-service, because it was given as a composition for the services to which the land was originally liable. Rent-charge was a rent granted out of lands by deed; for this the grantee had no power to distrain, because there was no fealty annexed to such grant; but to remedy this inconvenience an express power of distress was commonly inserted in the grant. Where, however, a rent for the recovery of which no power of distress was given either by the rules of the common law or the agreement of the parties, — as where a landlord granted away his rent without at the same time granting the reversion to which that rent was incident, — this was called rentseek, or barren rent. But by Stat, i Geo. II. ch. 28, a power of distress was made incident both to rents-charge and to rents-seek.

— There were other minor varieties of rents. (ji Rent is a certain profit issuing yearly out of lands and tenements corporeal. It may be regarded as of a twofold nature: as something issuing out of the land, as a compensation for the possession during the term; and as an acknowledgment made by the tenant to the lord of his fealty or tenure. It must always be a profit: yet there is no occasion for it to be, as it usually is, a sura of money;

— for spurs, fowls, horses, corn, and other matters may be, and occasionally are, rendered by way of rent. It may also consist in services or manual operations, as to plough so many acres of ground, and the like; which services, in the eye of the law, are profits. The profit must be certain, or that which may be reduced to a certainty by either party; it must Issue yearly, though it may be reserved every second, third, or fourth year; it must issue out of the thing granted, and not be part of the land or thing itself, which must be either lands or tenements corporeal. Wharton. Rents are not included under " earnings," in a statute making an unrecorded assignment of future earnings invalid against a trustee process, where they are payable under an ordinary contract of lease, which rec^uires no personal services on the part of the lessor. Kendall v. Kingsley, 120 Mass. 94. The expression rents and profits, in a of the land, if necessary to effect the testator's intention. Schermerhorne v. Schermerhorne, 6 Johns. Ch. 70. Rents of assise. The certain and determined rents of the freeholders and ancient copyholders of manors are called rents of assise, apparently because they were assised or made certain, and so distinguished from redditus mobilis, which was a variable or fluctuating rent. See 3 Cruise Dig. 314.

Rents resolute

Rents anciently payable to the crown from the lands of abbeys and religious houses; and after their dissolution, notwithstanding that the lands were demised to others, yet the rents were still reserved and made payable again to the crown.

Cowel.