exceptions and does not extend to devises by will for ever where the words of perpetuity sufficiently explain the intention of the devisor. So, also in grants to corporations and their successors, the word successors supplies the place of heirs, and is sufficient to create an inheritance. To feoff, or enfeoff, means to give one a feud or fee, that is the gift of any corporeal hereditaments in the sense already explained. He that enfeoffs is called the feoffer, and the person enfeoffed is named the feoffee.

Again the fee or estate of inheritance may be absolute or limited. If absolute, so that it be clear of all restrictions to particular heirs and all other limitations and conditions, and the tenant holds to him and his heirs for ever generally, he is said to be tenant in fee-simple, or tenant in fee. If conditional, so that the fee is restricted to some particular heirs exclusive of others, as, for example, to the heirs of a man's body, meaning by the common law his lineal descendants; to the exclusion of collateral heirs, or to the heirs male of his body, to the exclusion both of collaterals and lineal females, such fee is denominated conditional, and if the donee died without such heirs the land should revert it to the donor.

When lands and tenements are given to a man and the heirs of his body begotten, such donation is called an estate-tail general, and how often soever such donee be married his issue in general by all and every such marriage in successive order is capable of inheriting the estate-tail.

An Estate-tail special is where the gift is restrained to certain heirs of the donee begotten and does not go to all of them in general.

We have seen above that the word "heirs" was necessary to create a fee or a state of inheritance. In fee-tail the word body expressive of procreation is in addition, necessary, so that a grant to a man and his issue or children, would be only an estate for life, the words of inheritance his heirs being wanting. On the other hand a gift to a man and his heirs male without the words "of his body begotten" would be an estate in fee-simple and not a fee-tail.

(3). REMAINDER.

What I have already said in the preceding note on the origin of the word fee as signifying in its original or primary sense that which is held from some superior on condition of rendering him service in contradistinction to allodium and in its secondary or general sense as signifying an estate of inheritance, brings us to the consideration of estates with regard to the time of their enjoyment or the time when the actual receipt or taking the rents and profits thereof begins. Fee-simple and fee-tail as above explained, have regard to the quantity of interest which a tenant has in his lands or tenements, which quantity is measured by its duration or the length of time his right of possession is to subsist.

With regard to the time when the actual perception of rents, etc., begins, Estates may be either estates in possession or expectancy. Estates in possession are those whereby a present interest passes to the tenant

independent of any subsequent circumstance, such as fee-simple, etc., already spoken of. Estates in expectancy are of two kinds-one created by the parties themselves, called a remainder, and the other by the law, named a reversion. It must be borne in mind that out of the same fee several estates or interests may be carved. If a grant of land be made to one man for 31 years, and after the end of that term of years to a second for life, and after again to a third man and his heirs for ever here, we have different estates created out of one and the same fee or inheritance. The first is tenant for years, remainder to second for life, with remainder to third in fee. Here we have three different portions or interests, which are but the parts of the entire inheritance. A remainder may therefore be said to be an estate limited to be enjoyed after another estate has been determined. If there be a fee-simple estate granted there can be no remainder, because a tenant in fee has the highest interest, namely, the whole of the estate to him, and hence no remainder or residuary portion can be reserved when the whole has been disposed of. A reversion is where the land reverts to the grantor or his heirs after the grant is determined or over.

(4). DEMISED.

In a previous note on the word demise occurring in the first Inquisition, in the time of Philip and Mary, I explained how it meant a conveyance by lease. Lease is applied to an estate for life or years, as gift or donation is properly applied to the creation of an estate-tail, and feoffment to that of an estate in fee. A lease for life or for years must be always made for a less time than the lessor hath in the premises, for if it conveyed the whole interest it would be more properly an assignment. The lands leased were anciently called farm from a Saxon word feorme, signifying provisions, because the rents in consideration of which the lessee held them were discharged in provisions before the more general use of money. The farmer or firmarins was, accordingly, he who held his lands on payment of a feorme or rent. The word farm has lost its original signification, and now means the estate or lands themselves held upon the payment of rent. A tenant in fee-simple might grant leases any length of time, as having the whole interest in him, but a tenant in tail could make no lease which should bind the issue in tail. A statute of 32, Henry VIII., c. 28, however enabled a tenant in tail to make a lease binding his issue in tail, but not those in remainder or reversion. Several other statutes were passed in subsequent reigns having reference to leases made by Bishops, civil and ecclesiastical corporations called restraining statutes which do not concern us at least presently.

for

(5).-BURGAGE TENURE.

We have seen in a previous note on "tenures" and "knight's service," that since the statute 12, Charles II., socage tenure has absorbed almost every other species of tenure. In its general signification

socage being a tenure by any certain and determinate service or rent, it will necessarily include under it "burgage" tenure. When the tenements of an ancient borough are held from the king or some lord by a certain rent it is tenure in burgage. A borough was distinguished from other towns by the right of electing members of Parliament, and the antiquity of the borough was proven from the right of voting by burgage tenure. When houses, tenements, or lands that were formerly the sites of houses in an ancient borough are held of some lord for a certain fixed rent such holdings are by burgage tenure.

INQUISITIONS.

(INQUISITION IV.)

TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.

3

HOMAS COMERFORD,1 late of Ballyburr, in the County Kilkenny, was seized of the fee of the manor, Castle, and town of Ballyburr, and of two parts of the lands of Ballyburr, containing 5 acres great country measure. The aforesaid manor is in three separate parcells, the two parcells of which the aforesaid Thomas was seized are held as follows:-One is held as of the manor of Tulloughanbrogg for the annual rent of 24s. and suite of Courte, and the other is held as of the manor of [ ], by Knight's service. Fulco Freny was seized as of the fee of the town and fields of Ballymacclaghny, Ballytarsny and Caplestowne; and held the premises from Edward III., King of England, but by what service the jurors know not. So seized, on the 20th November, in the 17th year of the reign of the said King Edward, he made a gift-tail of the premises amongst others to his son Patrick Freny, and Johanna, his wife, and the heirs of their bodies as appeareth by a charter thereupon perfected, the tenor whereof followeth in the original. The aforesaid Thomas Comerford, as son and heir of Richard Oge Comerford, son and heir of Richard Roe Comerford, son and heir of Richard Comerford, senior, and Ellenora Freny, co-heiress of the gift-tail aforesaid of Patrick Freny, and Johanna, his wife, was seized of the moiety of the premises in fee-tail; and he held the premises at the time of his death from the heir of the aforesaid Fulco Freny. The aforesaid Thomas Comerford died 2nd February, 1588. The present Richard Comerford, of Ballyburr, is son and heir of the said Thomas, and was then 24 years of age, and married to Johanna Sweetman."

(1).-THE COMERFORD FAMILY.

In Blake Forster's "Irish Chieftains" (p. 476, n. 68) the following abridged account from Sir William Bentham, Ulster King-at-Arms, of the Comerford family, may not appear uninteresting :-"Sir Fulco de Comerford, with 200 men-at-arms and four knights of kindred to himself, accompanied William the Conqueror in his invasion of England in 1066. His descendant, Sir Henry de Comerford, came over to 'Ireland with Prince John in 1189, and married a niece of Sir Hugh de Lacy, Governor of Ireland in 1172, and thereby became possessed of considerable property, and was ancestor of the Comerford family; according to an ancient vellum MS. "Hee wase ane gudely knyghte, and ancesture of ye Comerford's, Barons of Dangeanmore." The descendants of Sir Henry Comerford, who appears to have been a younger son of the Comerford House of Staffordshire, settled in Kilkenny, and were long in the confidence and under the patronage of the Earls of Ormonde. The several branches, such as those of Ballybur, Inchy-Holohan, and Callan, were of high respectability amongst the gentry of Kilkenny previous to 1650, and filled from time to time more than one office of public trust. The House of Danganmore, i.e., "Great Fortress," near Castle Morres, was considered head of the family, and its titular lords were styled Barons of Danganmore. Other branches settled in Waterford, Wexford, at Holy Cross, in the County Tipperary, and at Welles, County Carlow,

From a volume of Irish Pedigrees in Mr. Forster's possession he gives the following extract :- "In 1300 Gerald Comerford was Guardian of the Peace for Kilkenny, and in 1302 married Arabella, daughter of Sir Anthony Plunket, Knight Banneret. In 1358 John Comerford

was appointed by King Edward III. to collect a subsidy over Kilkenny in aid of the war carried on agaainst Art. O'Kavanagh. The Comerfords became possessed of several valuable estates by the marriage of Richard Comerford, sen., with Ellen, daughter and co-heir of Patrick de La Freyne, or French, descended from Sir William de La Frayne alias Ffrench, who was knighted by his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and younger son of Sir Fulco de La Frayne, surnamed Le Chevalier, A.D. 1318. This Richard was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard Oge Comerford, or the younger, whose son and heir Thomas died in 1588, possessed of the manor, Castle, lands, and town of Ballybur, and was succeeded by his son and heir, Richard, who was then 24 years of age, and married." This lastmentioned Richard who, according to the "Inquisition" and the Pedigree just cited, was aged 24 years at the time of his father's death in 1588, died on the 15th June, 1637. After the death of his first wife, Johanna Sweetman, he married Mary, daughter of Thomas Purcell, Baron of Loughmoe. This appears from a Pedigree of the Ballybur Family, preserved in MS. volume in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, and quoted by O'Hart in his "Irish Landed Gentry" (p. 45). The pedigree is as follows:

Richard Comerford, of Ballyburley, Esq., had:

2. Richard, who had :

3. Thomas, who had :

4. Richard, of Ballyburley, Esq., who died 15th June, 1637. He married Mary, daughter of Thomas Purcell, Baron of Loughmoe, and had:

I. John, of whom presently

II. Richard, who married Eliza, daughter of William Dean, of Moycullen, County Kilkenny, gent.

5. John, son of Richard, married Grany, daughter of Morgan Cavenagh, of Bureas, in the County Carlow, and had a daughter :

6. Margaret, who married, first, Viscount St. Lawrence, Lord of Howth; and secondly, Jenico Viscount Preston. She died in Dublin, 16th November, 1637, and was buried in Stamullen, County Meath.

Ballybur Castle is minutely described by Hogan in the "Transactions of the Ossory Archæological Society," vol. 2, p. 33-48.

The Castle of Ballybur is distant about three and a-half miles from the City of Kilkenny, and about a quarter of a mile left of the high road leading to Callan, a little beyond the village of Cuffe's Grange. From personal recollection, I can accept as accurate, Mr. Hogan's description of it, as consisting of three floors, connected by a spiral stair-case. The ground and second floors are both arched overhead with stone, and the latter contains wall-recesses in the thickness of the masonry. The top apartment is furnished with a chimney-flue and mantle-tree, which lead Mr. Hogan to believe that as such contrivances were not introduced into Ireland till late in, or subsequent to, the time of Henry VII., that the Castle itself must have been accordingly erected by Thomas Comerford, who, according to the above Inquisition, died in 1588. However, as Richard Comerford, the grandfather of this Thomas, undoubtedly lived in Ballybur, it is not improbable, nor impossible, that the contrivances mentioned were an addition long subsequent to the foundation of the Castle, and made at a time when the use of the roof-louvre for the passage of smoke began to disappear. But there is another contention regarding this Castle, by Mr. Hogan, which invests it with exceptional interest. Here it was, he says, that John Babtist Rinuccini, the Papal Nunzio, had been entertained in the November of 1645 on his way from Limerick to the "City of the Confederates." It is true Mr. Hogan has against him in this conjecture the opinion of the Rev. J. Graves, who holds foremost place as an authority amongst Irish Antiquarians, he (the Rev. Mr. Graves) believing that the Castle of Inchiholohan was the " Villa" meant in the Prince of Fermo's Nunziature, where it is stated "The evening before I arrived in Kilkenny I stopped at a country seat about three miles distant, to give time for the preparations that were being made for my reception. Here four Knights accompanied by Mr. Belling (the Secretary of the Confederate Council) came from the Council to welcome me." It would be presumptuous in me to venture an opinion as to whether Ballybur or Inchiholohan claimed the honour of the Nunzio's reception, but this much seems to favour Mr. Hogan in