No such notion was applied to warranties, or to any right which was regarded wholly from the point of view of contract. And when we turn to the history of those remedies for rent which sounded in contract, we find that they were so regarded. The actions of debt and covenant [391] could not be maintained without privity. In the ninth year of Henry VI. /1/ it was doubted whether an heir having the reversion by descent could have debt, and it was held that a grantee of the reversion, although he had the rent, could not have that remedy for it. A few years later, it was decided that the heir could maintain debt, /2/ and in Henry VII.'s reign the remedy was extended to the devisee, /3/ who, as has been remarked above, seemed more akin to the heir than a grantee, and was more easily likened to him. It was then logically necessary to give assigns the same action, and this followed. /4/ The privity of contract followed the estate, so that the assignee of the reversion could sue the person then holding the term. /5/ On like grounds he was afterwards allowed to maintain covenant. /6/ But these actions have never lain for or against persons not privy in estate with the lessor and lessee respectively, because privity to the contract could never be worked out without succession to the title. /7/ However, all these niceties had no application to the old freehold rents of the feudal period, because the contractual remedies did not apply to them until the time of Queen Anne. /8/ The freehold rent was just as much real estate as an acre of land, and it was sued for by the similar remedy of an assize, asking to be put back into possession. [392] The allowance of contractual remedies shows that rent and feudal services of that nature, although dealt with as things capable of possession, and looked at generally from the point of view of property rather than of contract, yet approach much nearer to the nature of the latter than a mere duty not to interfere with a way. Other cases come nearer still. The sphere of prescription and custom in imposing active duties is large in early law. Sometimes the duty is incident to the ownership of certain land; sometimes the right is, and sometimes both are, as in the case of an easement. When the service was for the benefit of other land, the fact that the burden, in popular language, fell upon one parcel, was of itself a reason for the benefit attaching to the other.