Tenure

The mode or system of holding lands or tenements in subordination to some superior, which, in the feudal ages, was the leading characteristic of reui property. Tenure ls the direct result of feudalism, which separated the dominium directum, (the dominion of the soll,) which is placed mediately or immediately in the crown, from the dominion utile, (the possessory title,) the right to the use and profits in the soil, designated by the term "seisin," which ls the highest interest a subject can acquire, Wharton. Wharton gives the following list of tenures which were ultimately developed: Lay Tenures. I. Frank tenement, or freehold.
(1) The military tenures (abolished, except grand serjeanty, and, reduced to free socage tenures) were; Knight service proper, or tenure in chivalry; grand serjeanty; cornage.
(2) Free socage, or glow-service; either petit serjeanty, tenure in urgage, or gavelkind. II. Villeinage.
(1) Pure villeinage, (whence copyholds at the lord's [nominal] will, which is regulated according to custom.)
(2) Privileged villeinage, sometimes calied "villein socage," (whence tenure in ancient demesne, which isan exalted species of copyhold, held according to custom, and not according to the lord's will,) and is of three kinds: Tenure in ancient demesne ; privileged copyholds, customary freeholds, or free copyholds; copyholds of base tenure. Spiritual Tenures. I. Frankalmoigne, or free alma II. Tenure by divine service. Tenure, in its general sense, ls a mode of holding or occupying. Thus, we speak of the tenure of an office, meaning the maimer in which it is held, especially with regard to time, (tenure for life, tenure during good behavior,) and of tenure of land in the sense of occupation or tenancy, especially with reference to cultivation and questions of political economy; e. g., tenure by peasant proprietors, cottiers, etc. Sweet. See Bard v. Grundy, 2 Ky. 169; People v. Waite, 9 Wend. (N. Y.) 58; Richman V. Lippincott, 29 N. J. Law, 59.

— Tenure by divine service. where an ecclesiastical corporation, sole or aggregate, holds land by a certain divine service; as, to say prayers on a certain day in every year, "or to distribute in aimes to an hundred poore men an hundred pence at such a day." Litt. § 137.