FORASMUCH as Purchasers of Lands and Tenements of the Fees of great men and X1other Lords, have many times heretofore entered into their Fees, to the prejudice of the Lords, X2to whom the Freeholders of such great men (X3) have sold their Lands and Tenements to be holden in Fee (X4) of their Feoffors, and not of the Chief Lords of the Fees, whereby the same Chief Lords have many times lost their Escheats, Marriages, and Wardships of Lands and Tenements belonging to their Fees; which thing seemed very hard and extream unto those X5Lords and other great men, and moreover in this case manifest Disheritance: Our Lord the King, in his Parliament at Westminster after Easter, the eighteenth year of his Reign, that is to wit, in the Quinzime of Saint John Baptist, at the instance of the great Men of the Realm, granted, provided, and ordained, That from henceforth it shall be lawful to every Freeman to sell at his own pleasure his Lands and Tenements, or part of them; so that the Feoffee shall hold the same Lands or Tenements of the X6Chief Lord of the same Fee, by such Service and Customs as his Feoffor held before.