Land Law Registration
The law of the land comprises a crystallized expression of values cast in sharp relief against the landscape of the law. (Gray and Gray, Elements of Land Law) What key values or aims does English Land Law promote and evaluate the balance struck by them. Provide illustrations of relevant cases and statute in this regard. The English Land Law is one of the oldest branches found in the doctrine of common law. It has its origins in the feudal reforms imposed on England by William the Conqueror during the Norman Conquest after 1066.1 The Conquest brought with it a sharp distinction which still exists, technically between land and chattels. Chattels are things that can be owned; land cannot be owned, except by the monarch. If a private citizen cannot 'own' land, what is it that we really do own when we think of ourselves as 'land-owners'? Technically, we own what lawyers call an estate in land.2 Although 'estate' is a general term with an everyday meaning, in this context it has a specialist interpretation. An estate in land is some package of rights over land, and responsibilities accompanying those rights. These rights, by definition, fall short of absolute ownership, that is, they held their grants of land directly from the king.3 These rights included the right to enjoy an income from the agricultural production of the land, and were accompanied by certain obligations to the king. The estate defined the duration of the rights enjoyed by its owner, and the accompanying responsibilities. Consequently, the tenant-in-chief would create lesser tenancies out of his larger estate, and grant them to people who were prepared to accept obligations towards him.
These sub-tenants could then create their own sub-sub-tenancies, and so on. This process of 'sub-infeudation' is characteristic of the feudal system of land ownership common at that time; each tenant of land took a proportion of the income of the land from his sub-tenants, and rendered his own
These sub-tenants could then create their own sub-sub-tenancies, and so on. This process of 'sub-infeudation' is characteristic of the feudal system of land ownership common at that time; each tenant of land took a proportion of the income of the land from his sub-tenants, and rendered his own