The tenure of crown lands in _feodifirma_, or feu-farm, appears in England as early as the reign of King John, and must have then been already well established, as one of the stipulations in the articles of the Barons which led to the great charter of liberties or Magna Charta, and repeated in the latter, is, that if any one holds of the king _per feodifirmam_, or on _sokage_ or burgage tenure, and of another for military service, the king is not to have the custody of the heir or of his land who holds of another in fee by reason of his fee-farm, sokage, or burgage holding of the king, nor shall he have the custody of the latter unless the fee-farm owes military service;[299] and in Scotland it was evidently recognised as a tenure holding of the Crown in the reigns of William the Lion and of Alexander the Second. The tenure in feu-farm or _feodifirma_ was in fact an intermediate tenure between those who had merely the usufruct of land the right of property in which still remained with the granter, and those who held land as his vassal by a formal feudal grant for military service. Of the two words of which the name is composed, _Firma_—derived from the Saxon _feorm_—was the share of the produce of the land paid by a tenant to his landlord by way of rent; and to hold land _ad firmam_ or _in firma_ was equivalent to the modern leasehold tenure: it was constituted by a lease and completed by possession, and the tenant was called _firmarius_; but _feodum_ is the feudal fief granted by charter and completed by seisin or infeftment. The tenure _in feodifirma_, therefore, was a feudal grant of land, not for military service, but for a _firma_ or permanent rent, and was equally constituted by charter and seisin. Such lands were held _ad feodifirmam_, the annual payment was the _feodifirma_, and the holder was called _feodifirmarius_. These grants were supposed to resemble the Roman _Emphyteusis_, and the form still exists in Scotland in our modern feu-charter, in which the same expressions are used. In these the land is conveyed ‘in feu-farm, to be held in feu-farm fee and heritage for ever,’ for payment of an annual ‘feu-duty,’ and the granter is called the ‘feuar.’ It is, however, essentially a feudal holding, and differs from a mere tenancy by lease in this—that in the former the _dominium utile_ of the land is conveyed by charter to the vassal, while in the latter the usufruct of the land is solely given, and the property of the soil remains with the granter.[300] [Sidenote: Ranks of society on Crown lands.]