Landed propertyIn real estate, a landed property or landed estate is a property that generates income for the owner (typically a member of the gentry) without the owner having to do the actual work of the estate. In medieval Western Europe, there were two competing systems of landed property; manoralism, inherited from the Roman villa system, where a large estate is owned by the Lord of the Manor and leased to tenants; and the family farm or Hof owned by and heritable within a commoner family (c.f. yeoman), inherited from Germanic law.
Cluny AbbeyCluny Abbey (klyni; Abbaye de Cluny, formerly also Cluni or Clugny; Abbatia Cluniacensis) is a former Benedictine monastery in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France. It was dedicated to Saint Peter. The abbey was constructed in the Romanesque architectural style, with three churches built in succession from the 4th to the early 12th centuries. The earliest basilica was the world's largest church until the St. Peter's Basilica construction began in Rome. Cluny was founded by Duke William I of Aquitaine in 910.
Colonus (person)In the late Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages a colonus (plural: coloni) was a tenant farmer. Known collectively as the "colonate", these farmers operated as sharecroppers, paying landowners with a portion of their crops in exchange for use of their farmlands. The coloni'''s tenant-landlord relationship eventually degraded into one of debt and dependence. As a result, the colonus system became a new type of land tenancy, placing the occupants in a state between freedom and slavery.
EnclosureEnclosure or inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or "common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land could be either through a formal or informal process. The process could normally be accomplished in three ways. First there was the creation of "closes", taken out of larger common fields by their owners.
Quia EmptoresQuia Emptores is a statute passed by the Parliament of England in 1290 during the reign of Edward I that prevented tenants from alienating their lands to others by subinfeudation, instead requiring all tenants who wished to alienate their land to do so by substitution. The statute, along with its companion statute Quo Warranto also passed in 1290, was intended to remedy land ownership disputes and consequent financial difficulties that had resulted from the decline of the traditional feudal system in England during the High Middle Ages.
Freehold (law)In common law jurisdictions such as England and Wales, Australia, Canada, and Ireland, a freehold is the common mode of ownership of real property, or land, and all immovable structures attached to such land. It is in contrast to a leasehold, in which the property reverts to the owner of the land after the lease period expires or otherwise lawfully terminates. For an estate to be a freehold, it must possess two qualities: immobility (property must be land or some interest issuing out of or annexed to land) and ownership of it must be forever ("of an indeterminate duration").
