There is nothing in the patent which in terms empowers the patentees to grant lands to he holden of themselves, \_and all the manors were alike in this respect'], but it is argued that the erection of a manor and the authority to hold the courts mentioned, which, according to English law, are manor courts, necessarily implies the power to create suitors, who must of necessity be tenants, holding of the proprietor of the manor, owing him suit

5 In France this was different. Many seignories there did carry with them the right to a title, but it was not the case with all.

'The Sovereign alone is the "source of honor "' in England, and the sole power that can, or ever could, grant a title, or confer nobility, under English law.

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

and service. This, it is said^ is a violation of the statute called quia emptores terrarum, passed in the eighteenth year of Edward the First, {Anno 1290). This statute, after reciting that the feudal tenants have sold their lauds to be holden in fee of themselves, instead of the chief lord of the fee, whereby those lords have lost their escheats and other feudal perquisites to their " manifest disinheritance," enacts that " forever hereafter it shall be lawful to every freeman to sell at his own pleasure his lands or tenements, or part thereof, so neverthless that the I'eoftee [_the grantee], shall hold the same lands or tenements of the same chief lord of the fee and by the same services or customs as his feoffor [^grantor], held them before. A second chapter provides for an apportionment of the services in case of a sale of a psa't of the laud out of which they issued. (Coke, 2 Inst. 500.)