Heriot, from
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
''heregeat'' ("war-gear"), was originally a death-duty in
late Anglo-Saxon England, which required that at death, a nobleman provided to his king a given set of military equipment, often including horses, swords, shields, spears and helmets. It later developed into a kind of tenurial
feudal relief Feudal relief was a one-off "fine" or form of taxation payable to an overlord by the heir of a feudal tenant to license him to take possession of his fief, i.e. an estate-in-land, by inheritance. It is comparable to a death duty or inheritance ta ...
due from
villeins. The equivalent term in French was ''droit du meilleur catel''.
Etymology
The word derives from
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
''here-geatwa'', meaning the arms and equipment (''geatwa'') of a soldier or army (''here'').
History
Heriot was the right of a lord in
feudal
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
to seize a
serf
Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which developed ...
's best horse, clothing, or both, upon his death. It arose from the tradition of the lord lending a serf a horse or armour or weapons to fight so that when the serf died the lord would rightfully reclaim his property. Payments of heriot are sometimes mentioned in the
wills of West-Saxon nobles from the mid-tenth century onward (a case in question is that of
Æthelmær). The regulation of levels of heriot is the subject of a clause in
Cnut
Cnut (; ang, Cnut cyning; non, Knútr inn ríki ; or , no, Knut den mektige, sv, Knut den Store. died 12 November 1035), also known as Cnut the Great and Canute, was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norway ...
's secular law-code (II Cnut § 71), drawn up between 1020 and 1023. The form of this duty depended on the rank of the nobleman (earl, king's
thegn, median thegn) and on his region (
Danelaw,
Wessex).
When
knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the Christian denomination, church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood ...
s as a class emerged and were later able to acquire their own fighting instruments, the lord continued to claim rights to property upon death, extending sometimes to everyone not just the fighting knights. Serfs could make provisions for heriot in their wills, but death in battle often meant no heriot was required, because the winner of a fight would often take horse and armour anyway as was often the custom. By the 13th century the payment was made either in money or in kind by handing over the best beast or chattel of the tenant. The enlightened cleric
Jacques de Vitry
Jacques de Vitry (''Jacobus de Vitriaco'', c. 1160/70 – 1 May 1240) was a French canon regular who was a noted theologian and chronicler of his era.
He was elected bishop of Acre in 1214 and made cardinal in 1229.
His ''Historia Orientali ...
called lords who imposed heriots "vultures that prey upon death... worms feeding upon the corpse."
Heriot came in many varieties.
G. G. Coulton reports a curious case of heriot in modern times:
Heriot is one of the many curious laws from feudal times that started because of a logical need between two parties, and persisted because a lord's customary rights tended to continue on even when their original reason no longer existed. This law and many others, such as the noble right not to pay taxes, have a long and contentious history in Europe. It was legally abolished in Britain in 1922.
See also
*
Copyhold
Copyhold was a form of customary land ownership common from the Late Middle Ages into modern times in England. The name for this type of land tenure is derived from the act of giving a copy of the relevant title deed that is recorded in the ...
(the manorial law relating to heriot).
*
Anglo-Saxon weaponry
Many different weapons were created and used in Anglo-Saxon England between the fifth and eleventh centuries. Spears, used for piercing and throwing, were the most common weapon. Other commonplace weapons included the sword, axe, and knife—howev ...
References
*Abels, Richard. ''Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England''. London, 1988.
*Abels, Richard. "Heriot." ''The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England'', ed. Michael Lapidge et al. Oxford: Blackwell: 1999. 235–6.
*
*Stafford, Pauline. "King and kin, Lord and Community." In ''Gender, Family and the Legitimation of Power''.
{{1911, wstitle=Heriot, volume=13, page=364
External links
Canute, King of the English: On Heriots and Reliefs, c. 1016-1035
Feudalism in England
Serfdom