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Land tenure under the feudal system

Under feudalism in France and England during the Middle Ages, tenure by serjeanty ('/s//ɑːr//dʒ//ən//t//i/) was a form of tenure in return for a specified duty other than standard knight service.

The word comes from the French noun sergent, itself from the Latin serviens, servientis, "serving", the present participle of the verb servo, "to keep, preserve, save, rescue, deliver". "Sergeant" is derived from the same source, though developing an entirely different meaning.

Serjeants (servientes) already appear as a distinct class in the Domesday Book of 1086, though not in all cases differentiated from the barons, who held by knight service. A few mediaeval tenures by serjeanty can be definitely traced as far back as Domesday in the case of three Hampshire serjeanties: those of acting as king's marshal, of finding an archer for his service, and of keeping the gaol in Winchester Castle. It is probable, however, that many supposed tenures by serjeanty were not really such, although so described in returns, in inquisitions post mortem, and other records. The simplest legal test of the tenure was that serjeants, though liable to the feudal exactions of wardship, etc., were not liable to scutage; they made in place of this exaction special composition with the Crown. Some of the Domesday Book tenants may have been serjeants before the Norman Conquest, in the time of King Edward the Confessor. For instance, a certain Siward Accipitrarius (from Latin accipiter, "hawk"), presumably hawker to Edward the Confessor, held from the king an estate worth £7 in Somerset and did so in an area appropriate to his occupation, close to a water habitat. J. H. Round ascribed the development of serjeanties in England to Norman influence, though he did not dismiss earlier roots. The Anglo Saxon historian James Campbell has suggested that serjeanties such as the messenger services recorded in the 13th century may represent "semi fossilised remnants of important parts of the Anglo Saxon governmental system".

The germ of the later distinction between "grand" (French: grand, "large") and "petty" (French petit, "small") serjeanty is found in the Magna Carta of 1215, the king there renouncing the right of prerogative wardship in the case of those who held of him by the render of small articles. The legal doctrine which developed that serjeanties were inalienable (i. e. non transferable) and impartible, led during the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272) to the arrentation of those serjeanties the lands of which had been partly alienated, which were thereby converted into socage tenures (i. e. paying money rents), or in some cases, tenures by knight service. Gradually the gulf widened, and "petty" serjeanties, consisting of renders, together with serjeanties held of mesne lords, sank into socage, while "grand" serjeanties, the holders of which performed their service in person, became alone In Littleton's Tenures (15th century), this distinction appears as well defined, but the development was one of legal theory.

Although today any surviving remnants of grand sergeanty are regarded as roles of high honour, it should be remembered that originally grand sergeanty was a duty, not a right. Clearly even by the medieval era much grand sergeanty had become in practice merely a token of high honour given by a monarch, where the duty was patently absurd and entirely non onerous, except for the requirement of the physical presence of the tenant concerned. The duty of supporting the king's right arm was still performed at the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902. Although the first holder of such heritable grand sergeanties was clearly a man well liked and respected by the appointing monarch, and suitable to the role, the character of the tenant's heir in the duty, often involving close personal proximity, might be less pleasing to future monarchs. Today, those with duties pertaining to the coronation are required to make their case to perform them at the Court of Claims. The meaning of serjeant as a household officer is still preserved in the monarch's serjeants at arms, serjeant surgeons and serjeant trumpeter. The horse and foot serjeants (servientes) of the king's army in the 12th century, who ranked after the knights and were more lightly armed, were unconnected with land tenure.

Round, J. Horace. The King's Serjeants & Officers of State with their Coronation Services. London, 1911. PDF available from the Internet Archive. Oggins, Robin S. The Kings and Their Hawks. New Haven, 2004. Pollock, Sir Frederick and Frederic William Maitland. History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. 2nd edition. 1898 (first edition 1895). Available from the Internet Archive.