Quia Emptores - Overview

Overview

As there had been no survey of land titles since the Domesday Book over 200 years earlier, outright title to land had become seriously clouded in many cases and was often in dispute. Furthermore, free tenants were able to grant away their land such that the Lords who held outright title of such land did not have any power over the sub-tenant to collect taxes or enforce feudal duties, a practice known as alienation. Quia Emptores mandated that when land was alienated, the grantee was required to assume all tax and feudal obligations of the original tenant, known as substitution.

By effectively ending the practice of subinfeudation, Quia Emptores hastened the end of feudalism in England, which had already been on the decline for quite some time. Direct feudal obligations were increasingly being replaced by cash rents and outright sales of land which gave rise to the practice of livery and maintenance or bastard feudalism, the retention and control by the nobility of land, money, soldiers and servants via direct salaries, land sales and rent payments. This was one of the underlying causes of the Wars of the Roses, the English civil wars fought by the House of York and House of Lancaster for control of the English Crown from 1455 to 1485. By the mid-fifteenth century the major nobility, particularly the Houses of York and Lancaster, were able to assemble vast estates, considerable sums of money and large private armies on retainer through post-Quia Emptores land management practices and direct sales of land. The two noble Houses thus grew more powerful than the Crown itself, with the consequent wars between them for control of the realm.

Ultimately the statutes of Quia Emptores and Quo Warranto became the foundation of modern real estate and landlord/tenant relations law. It was only repealed in Ireland by the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act, 2009.