History of the Town of Flatbush

These tenures however, in addition to the obligation of fealty and the military services of forty days in a year, were subject to certain other hard conditions, which we need not here enumerate, but which gradually rendered them more and more oppressive and increased the power of the feudal lords. At length upon the restoration of Charles the Second, to the crown of Great Britain, the tenure by knight service with all its grievous incidents, was abolished by law, and the tenure of land was, for the most part, turned into free and common soccage, and every thing oppressive in that tenure was also abolished.

A soccage tenure according to which the town of Midwout, or Flatbush, was patented, denotes lands held by a fixed and determinate service which is not military nor in the power of the lord to vary at his pleasure. It was the certainty and specific nature of the service, duty, or render, which made this species of tenure such a safeguard against the wanton exactions of the feudal lords, and rendered it of such inestimable value in view of the ancient English. It was deemed by them a point of the utmost importance, to change their tenures by knight service, into tenures by soccage.

All lands granted by Patent by Governor Dongan, and the other subsequent English governors, were in free and common soccage, and subject to an annual render or rent charge, called quit rent. In the Patent of the town of Midwout, this render or rent charge was fixed at eighteen bushels of good winter merchantable wheat, to be yielded, rendered and paid yearly and every year, at the city of New-York, on or before the 25th, of March, in every year to the king, his heirs and successors, or to such officer or officers as he or they should appoint to receive the same. This render and delivery of wheat, was regularly and annually made by the freeholders and inhabitants of this town, to an officer residing in the city of New-York, appointed to receive the same, and styled "the Receiver General." The quit rent continued to be paid in kind, till it became more convenient for the inhabitants to pay, and the crown to receive money, in the place of wheat. The Receiver General was then authorized and required in equity and good conscience, to estimate the standard value of wheat in money. According to his determination, wheat was valued in money, at four shillings and eight pence a bushel, New-York currency. This appears to have been the standard value thereof for years. From this time onward, the quit rents of the town were regularly paid in money, according to the then estimated value every year, until the 25th, day of March, 1762. Why the payments were not regularly and annually continued, from and after that time, does not appear. The delay may perhaps be ascribed to the agitations then existing in the country, caused by events which led to the war of the revolution. Soccage tenures are however considered by Chancellor Kent, from whose commentaries on American laws, the above recited account of tenures is taken, as of feudal extraction, and retain some of the leading properties of feuds. But most of the feudal incidents and consequences of soccage tenures were expressly abolished in the State of New-York, shortly after the termination of the revolutionary war, and they are wholly and entirely annihilated by the Revised Statutes, which took effect on the 1st, of January, 1830. But soccage lands were not to be deemed discharged of any rents, certain or other services, incident or belonging to tenure in soccage, due to the people of the State (who were considered to stand in the place of the crown.) Therefore on the 1st, day of April, 1786,