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.

Property in land has a double origin. " It has arisen," in the words of Maine, "partly from the disentanglement of the individual rights of the kindred or tribesmen, from the collective rights of the Family or Tribe, and partly from the growth and transmutation of the Sovereignty of the Tribal Chief. . . . Both the sovereignty of the Chief and the ownership of land by the Family or Tribe were in most of Western Europe passed through the crucible of feudalism ; but the first re-appeared in some well-marked characteristics of military or Knightly tenures, and the last in the principle rules of non-noble holdings, and among them of Socage, the distinctive tenure of the free farmer." Its essential character was " its liability to rents and services due, not to the State, but to the grantor, who in most cases was the lord of the manor, holding under a charter [meaning a grant or patent) given or confirmed by the crown." ® The word socage is generally believed to have been derived from " soca " a plough. It was " originally applied only to husbandmen who owed fixed services for husbandry.