CHAPTER III.— THE THREE STATUTES OF EDWARD I.
"Homage is the most honourable service, and most humble service of reverence, that a frank tenant may do to his lord. For when the tenant shall make homage to his lord, he shall be ungirt, and his head uncovered, and his lord shall sit, and the tenant shall kneel before him on both his knees, and hold his hands jointly together between the hands of his lord, and shall say thus: I become your man (Jeo deveign vostre home) from this day forward of life and limbe, and of earthly worship and unto you shall be true and faithfuU, and beare to you faith for the tenements that I claime to hold of you, saving the faith that I owe unto our soveraigne lord the king; and then the lord so sitting shall kisse him.
"But if an abbott, or a pryor, or other man of religion, shall doe homage to his lord, he shall not say, I become your man, etc. for that he hath professed himselfe to be onely the man of God. But he shall say thus : I doe homage unto you, and to you I shall be true and faithfull, and faith to you beare for the tenements which I hold of you, saving the faith which I doe owe unto our lord the king.
"Also, if a woman sole shall doe homage, she shall not say, I become your woman; for it is not fitting that a woman should say that she will become a woman to any man, but to her husband, when she is married. But she shall say, I do you homage, and to you shall be faithful and true, and faith to you shall bear for the tenements I hold of you, saving the faith I owe to our soveraigne lord the king."—Littleton, "Of Homage."
THE reign of Edward I. is most important in the history of landholding in England. It was the period of the consolidation of the feudal system; it was the beginning of legislation on the transfer of land.
Military service was the foundation of the Norman land system. When there was no standing army, military service was a great part of the rent paid for land. The system was not without its compensations. As the term of service was strictly limited (forty days was the usual time), wars, though frequent, were not so continuous as they became when they were carried on by men whose sole occupation was fighting. But besides this the Norman system was a system of fines, most useful when taxation was more or less spasmodic. The sums exacted for recoveries, and the great profit a feudal lord made out of his wards and their marriages, enabled him to pay the sums demanded of himself by the King. Church lands were
