Quia Emptores

Forasmuch as purchasers of lands and tenements of the fees of great men and other lords have many times heretofore entered into their fees, to the prejudice of the lords . . . our Lord the King, in his Parliament . . . hath granted, provided, and ordained, that from henceforth it shall be lawful to every freeman to sell at his own pleasure his lands or tenements, or part of them; so that the feoffee shall hold the same lands or tenements of the chief lord of the same fee, by such service and customs as his feoffor held before.

Editorial note. Under the pre-1290 practice of subinfeudation, an alienor could create a new tenure between himself and the alienee, interposing a mesne lord and depriving the chief lord of the incidents of tenure (wardship, marriage, escheat, and reliefs). The great magnates obtained Quia Emptores to end that practice.

Editorial note. The statute preserves the seignorial incidents of the chief lord by requiring that every alienation of a fee simple take effect by substitution rather than by the creation of a new tenure.

Editorial note. A tenant in fee simple may alienate the whole or any part of his tenement to another, and the alienee holds of the same chief lord by the same services and customs by which the alienor held. Subinfeudation of estates in fee simple is prohibited.

Editorial note. The statute applies to freeholds held in fee simple. It did not disturb tenure by frankalmoin, tenure in tail (De Donis, 1285), or copyhold tenure; nor did it bind the Crown, which continued to alienate by grant creating new tenures.

Editorial note. Quia Emptores is the companion of De Donis (1285) in the medieval settlement of English tenures: De Donis restrained alienation of the fee tail; Quia Emptores freed alienation of the fee simple. The two statutes together defined the outer limits of dispositive freedom over land for the next three hundred years.

Editorial note. The modern American fee simple absolute descends directly from Quia Emptores: it is freely alienable inter vivos and at death, and every purchaser takes by substitution from a chain of prior owners rather than as a tenant of a new mesne lord.

Editorial note. By ending the creation of new subinfeudated estates, Quia Emptores gradually starved the feudal system of new intermediate tenures. The Tenures Abolition Act 1660 (12 Car. 2, c. 24) completed the transformation by converting most remaining tenures into free and common socage.

Editorial note. First, every fee simple is alienable in whole or in part. Second, every alienation of a fee simple operates by substitution. Third, the alienee's tenure runs to the same chief lord upon the same services as the alienor's tenure.

Editorial note. The statute was invoked in the great tenurial cases through the sixteenth century and cited in American land-law decisions to justify the free alienability of fee simple estates and to reject any residual doctrine of feudal seignorial control.

Editorial note. American courts treat Quia Emptores as declaratory of the common law of alienation received in the several States. It supplies the historical foundation for the modern presumption against restraints on alienation of the fee simple.

Editorial note. See De Donis Conditionalibus, 13 Edw. 1, c. 1 (1285); Tenures Abolition Act 1660, 12 Car. 2, c. 24; Restatement (First) of Property §§ 404–423 (restraints on alienation).

Editorial note. Every modern conveyance of a fee simple in an American jurisdiction is an act performed under the doctrinal authority of Quia Emptores.