ABSTRACT
The history of landownership gives a glimpse of the paradox. Feudal landright was a local thing, taking its colours from the changing customs of honours and manors. Custom changed with succeeding generations the consensus of the lord and his tenantry, whether bond or free, determined it according to current knowledge and circumstance. The transfer of power in the Middle Ages from the local feudal courts to the king as sovereign, his courts and his Parliament, established both common law and statute law; a twin-pillared worthy house within whose abiding shade the clay of plastic ideas could harden. During the period of transition between baronial power and the establishment of Parliamentary authority, the king gathered about him a personal bureaucracy.
