Lanterna Rally

Author: John Horace Round

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-20

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 9781331904175

Excerpt from The King's Serjeants Officers of State: With Their Coronation Services There would seem to be at the present time a very real need for a work dealing with the subject of serjeanty, one of the great English tenures, and with the services due from those whom Domesday Book styles the King's serjeants (servientes regis). Although the materials for such a study have accumulated rapidly of late, there is no modern book devoted to the subject, nor, indeed, is there any book which attempts to deal with it systematically, in the scientific historical spirit. Blount's ever-green little book, "Fragmenta Antiquitatis, Ancient Tenures of Land, and Jocular customs of some manors," was issued so far back as 1679, and, neither in its original form nor in its later editions, does it supply the want. Indeed, it touched on much that was not serjeanty at all, while omitting a great deal that is essential to a study of the subject. It is only right to remember that, as Blount modestly observes, he published his collection for the entertainment and relaxation of the reader. He wrote, as his preface informs us, that the studious, when weary with poring upon Littleton's Tenures, and his learned Commentator, might 'relaxere fibulam' by recurring to these, and smile at the inoffensive mirth, both of our kings, in former times, and lords of manors in creating them. It is no systematic treatise, no classified arrangement, that he sets before us, but a scrap-book, or olla podrida ranging from the tenures, or alleged tenures of great officers of state, to those of humble peasants. He jotted down, in the course of his researches, undertaken "for other ends," tenures "in some respect or other remarkable" or "singular." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.