The former was a Propiietor only, as William Peun and Lord Baltimore were, in Pennsylvania and in Maryland. The latter was an owner in fee with no powers, rights or privileges, but those appurtenant to, and consistent with, the freest allodial tenure. Moreover, it not only never existed, but it could not possibly have existed in New York. For it was prohibited by the statute law wiihin the realm of England four years before New York became an integral part of the dominions of that realm.

What then was the tenure described, " as of our jnannor of East Greenwich and our County of Kent in free and common soccage and not in capite or by Knight service, upon which the Province of New York was holden under his grant from the King of England by the Duke of York as Lord Proprietor ? "

Socage' tenure was a holding of lands by a certain service or rent. Certainty as opposed to the uncertainty of tenure by Knight service, or as sometimes

iDwight's Introduction to the American edition of Maine's Ancient Law, LXIV.

- Sir E. Crenry's Rise of the British Constitution, 83. 3 The word is now spelled with one '• c " only.

styled, " in chivalry," was for its essence. It made no matter what the service, or rent, was, so long as it was absolutely certain. It might be by ploughing lands for a fixed number of days at a time fixed, or it might be for a fixed annual rent, payable either in cattle, produce or in money, or it might be by homage, fealty, and a fixed money rent, in lieu of all manner of services, or by fealty only in lieu of every other service.* This inherent element of certainty was what gave this tenure its power, and has made it the only tenure by which, in different forms and under different modifications, and under systems based upon its principles, lands are now held in the English-speaking nations of the world.