And when by these deductions his fortune was so shattered and ruined, that perhaps he was obliged to sell his patrimony, he had not even that poor privilege allowed him, without paying an exorbitant fine for a licence of alienation."—"Commentaries," II. 75-76.
Blackstone well calls this a "complicated and extensive slavery." Palliatives were applied from time to time by successive Acts of Parliament, but what was wanted was to abolish the system altogether.
The legislation of Edward I., in the three great Statutes of Mortmain, De Donis, and Quia Emptores, had the same ultimate object of keeping the land as a nursery of fighting men. Mortmain ensured that no more lands should be exempt from feudal service, by forbidding landowners to alienate, or allow those who held under them to alienate lands to the Church. Quia Emptores by empowering freemen to sell—as long as they sold under feudal tenure—virtually made the smaller estates Crown fiefs, and turned the old "udall" freeholders into feudal vassals. These small landholders, whose lands were "udall" from time immemorial, and had been guaranteed to them by the Conqueror, could now sell, upon the sole condition that he to whom they sold should hold the lands of the "chief lord"—the King or other—"by such customs" as the seller had held them. There was now freedom of sale, but not of conditions. And as all "udall" lands were held under an obligation to defend the King, "alienation from service" was rendered impossible.
