_In theory_, the tenant in chief could not sell his land; he could sublet it to a _mesne tenant_, who stood to himself precisely in the same relation as he--the tenant _in capite_--stood to the sovereign, the mesne tenant in his turn being bound to render certain _services_ to his over lord, and liable to forfeit his _lease_--for in theory it was that--if certain contingencies happened. It was inevitable that, as time went by, the mesne tenant should regard his estate as his own, and that the same necessities which compelled the tenant _in capite_ to relax his hold over an outlying landed estate would compel the mesne tenant to follow his example. The process went on till it was becoming a serious difficulty to discover how the King was to get his _services_ from the tenant _in capite_, who had practically got rid of two-thirds of his _fief_, and how he again was to get _his services_ from the mesne tenant, who had parted with two-thirds of _his_ estate to half a dozen under tenants. Obviously, when the King's _scutage_ had to be levied, there was no telling who was liable for it, or how it should be apportioned. It was to meet this difficulty, and to check the prevailing sub-division of land--_sub-infeudation_ men called it then--that the statute of _Quia Emptores_ was passed in the eighteenth year of King Edward I. [A.D. 1290]. The result of all the sub-division that been going on had been that the number of what we now call _landed estates_ had largely increased, each of them administered on the model of the larger _fiefs_ originally granted to the tenants _in capite_. There was a capital mansion in which the _lord_ resided, or was supposed to reside, and sub-tenants holding their land under the lord, and paying to him periodically certain small money rents and rendering him certain _services_. The _estate_ comprehended the capital mansion with its appurtenances and the domain lands in the lord's occupation, the common lands over which the tenants had certain common rights, and the lands in the occupation of the tenants, which they farmed with more or less freedom for their own behoof,--the whole constituting a manor whose owner was the lord. At certain intervals the tenants were bound to appear before their lord and give account of themselves; bound, that is, to show cause why they had not performed their _services_; bound to pay their quit rents, whether in money or kind; bound to go through a great deal of queer business; but above all, as far as our present purpose is concerned, _to do fealty_ to the lord of the manor in every case where the small patches of land had changed hands, and pay a fine for entering upon land acquired by the various forms of alienation or by inheritance. In some manors, if a tenant died the lord laid claim to some of his live stock as a _heriot_, which was forthwith seized by the bailiff of the manor; and in all manors, if a man died without heirs,