Frankalmoin

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Frankalmoin (from Norman French fraunch aumoyne “free alms”) was one of the feudal duties and hence land tenure forms in feudal England by which an ecclesiastical body held land, in return for saying prayers and masses for the soul of the granter. Not only was secular service frequently not due but in the twelfth and thirteenth century jurisdiction over land so held belonged to the ecclesiastical courts.

It fell into disuse because on any alienation of the land the tenure was converted into socage, and no fresh grants in frankalmoin, save by the Crown, were possible after Quia Emptores in 1290. Thomas de Littleton's Tenures, which perhaps appeared about 1470 as an update of a then century-old predecessor tract (the Old tenures) said to have been written under Edward III, contains a section on Frankalmoin which Edward Coke commented on in the first part of his Institutes of the Lawes of England^[1], published within his Commentary upon Littleton, which he completed about a century and a half after its subject's first appearance, providing cases and noting how practice related to Littleton's work had changed during that time. By 1660, frankalmoin had become so uncommon that it was not formally abolished in the Statute of Tenures. In 1925 the tenure was converted into common socage.

[edit] Source

1. ^ Coke, Edward. "The First Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England: Or A Commentary upon Littleton, Not the name of the Author only, but of the Law it selfe; section 138, Frankalmoin, part 5", in Steve Sheppard (ed.): The Selected Writings of Sir Edward Coke (PDF), 700–701. ISBN 0-86597-316-4. Retrieved on 2006-08-17.