Royal Demesne
| Author | Christopher Jessel |
| Pages | 391-406 |
Chapter 24
Royal Demesne
24.1 CROWN ESTATE
Special rules applied to Crown manors and related issues, including allodial land. All England can be compared to a manor. The Queen is lord, and all who hold of her, from the greatest earls and barons to the least Crown freeholder, are her tenants. They owe suit of court and are entitled to royal justice. The common law is sometimes described as the custom of the realm.
Crown manors derive from two sources. First, the theory in law (whatever its historical merit) is that all land in the country was initially at the disposal of the king and was granted out by him to be held in tenure (22.3). He retained some lands (perhaps amounting to as much as a third of England under William I) from which he took rents to finance his own expenses as king. The second source is acquisitions over the centuries by purchase, escheat or forfeiture, or by Henry VIII on the Dissolution. The king was expected to ‘live of his own’, that is to cover the normal expenses of peacetime government out of his regular revenues without raising taxes.
Royal estates diminished as lands and manors were granted to the Church or to favoured courtiers or were sold. This reduced royal revenues to such an extent that they did not cover the cost of government. In the Civil List Act 1760, George III agreed that instead of seeking to administer the country out of his own revenues, with some assistance from taxes, he would leave it to Parliament to find the money to run the administration. He surrendered his ‘rents of lands’,
1 Veley v Burder (1841) 12 Ad & E 265 at 302, 113 ER 812 at 828, per Tindal CJ.
392 The Law of the Manor
that is the revenue from his income-producing estates, and in return received a civil list to cover his own immediate expenses. William IV added various assets by the Civil List Act 1831, notably the casual revenues which appear to have included escheats expressly preserved by s 12 of the Act, albeit for the benefit of the Treasury not for the king.
This system has been repeated by each successive sovereign on succession.
Management of Crown lands, including manors, was therefore taken on by officials accountable to Parliament. The administration has been revised from time to time, notably in the Crown Lands Act 1851, and is now carried out by the Crown Estate Commissioners under the Crown Estate Act 1961. However, as indicated below, that does not extend to the royal parks and palaces, and there are also numerous other Crown entities, notably various Secretaries of State, that administer different properties, such as lands held for training defence forces, woodlands, and office blocks for the Civil Service.
Royal mines are considered in 11.5. The interest of the Crown is best seen not as holding the strata in which gold and silver occur but as more like a profit, that is the right to take precious metals from the land of a subject, perhaps most analogous to the Crown interest in wild animals before the abolition of chase and warren. The statutory right to petroleum and natural gas is similar.
24.2 ROYAL RESIDENCES AND PARKS
Some palaces and other residences were comprised within manors. The most important still remaining is Windsor, which belonged to the Saxon kings. Shortly before his death Edward the Confessor endowed the Abbey of Westminster, with the estate but soon after the Conquest William I reclaimed Windsor and the manor has been in royal hands ever since. Hampton belonged to the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem. In 1514 they leased it to Cardinal Wolsey and he built Hampton Court. In 1531 the Hospitallers by way of exchange conveyed the freehold to the king. On Wolsey’s disgrace Henry VIII took it in hand and it has remained royal property. Richmond Park is parcel of the manor of Shene. Hyde Park was part of the manor of Hyde acquired by Henry VIII from Westminster Abbey.
However, many palaces and parks in London are not comprised within manors. The Tower of London on the edge of the City was a fortress in its own right. The manor of Westminster belonged to the Abbey in the Middle Ages and
2 See now the Sovereign Grant Act 2011.
3 Star Energy Weald Basin Limited v Bocardo SA [2011] 1 AC 380.
although it is said that Cardinal Wolsey granted it to Henry VIII, Parliament had been meeting at the Palace of Westminster long before that. Hall v Mayor of London
that the freehold was vested in the Crown. The Court of Appeal held that under the Act the correct person to take possession proceedings was the Mayor of London.
The Crown Estate Commissioners manage Windsor Great Park. Most royal parks are administered by the Royal Parks, which is an agency of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. That Department has contracted out the management of the historic royal palaces including the Tower of London, Hampton Court, part of Kensington Palace and Kew Palace to a charity called Historic Royal Palaces. However, where land within the boundaries of a park or palace was let or capable of being let in 1760 it fell to be managed (as rents of land) by the predecessors of the Crown Estate Commissioners so that for instance, they have certain detached properties within Hampton Court Park.
Those palaces still used by the Queen or the Royal Family, including Buckingham Palace, Buckingham Palace Mews and Gardens, St James’s Palace (with Clarence House), Windsor Castle and Windsor Castle Royal Mews, buildings in Windsor Home Park, Hampton Court Mews and Paddocks, and residential areas of Kensington Palace, are known as occupied royal palaces. They are run on a day-to-day basis by the Royal Household, although the Department has overall responsibility for the buildings. Somerset House appears to be allodial land with its own constitution under the Somerset House Act 1984. The Palace of Westminster is under the management of the Parliamentary authorities.
The Queen also has certain properties which are her own personal belongings held as freeholds. These are governed by the Crown Private Estates Act 1862. The most important in England is the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk and any manors comprised in that estate would be the personal property of the Queen and not part of the assets of the government. The Queen is free to dispose of the private estates by gift or will.
4 [2010] EWCA Civ 817, [2011] 1 WLR 504.
5 Ibid at [25].
394 The Law of the Manor
24.3 ALLODIAL LAND
Most Crown properties are freehold, resulting from purchases over the centuries. Some are leasehold but, as the sovereign cannot be the tenant of any person or be liable on covenants, such leases are taken in the name of a nominee, such as the Crown Estate Commissioners or a Secretary of State. Others remain allodial. They stand in the name of the Queen so that any dealing with them will need to name her, although any legal proceedings would be instituted in the name of an agent such as the Crown Estate Commissioners or the Attorney-General.
The expression ‘allodial land’ derives from the distinction found on the Continent between land held in benefice and land held without a seignior (8.1,
22.2). Since in England all land of subjects is held by tenure
To continue reading
Request your trial