The character and importance of livery of seisin in the fedual system of land ownership has been thus described by a recent author: "It is absolutely essential - if we leave out of account certain exceptions that are rather apparent than real - that there should be a livery of seisin. The doner and the donee in person or by attorney must come upon the land. There the words of gift will be said or the charter, if there be one, will be read. It is usual, though perhaps not necessary, that there should be some further ceremony. If the subject of gift be a house, the donor will put the hasp or ring of the door into the donee's hand (tradere per haspam vel annuluum); if there be no house, a rod will be transferred (trudere per fustem et baculum) or perhaps a glove. Such is the common and the safe practice; but it is not indispensable that the parties should actually stand on the land that is to be given. If the land was within their view when the ceremony was performed, and if the feoffee made an actual entry on it while the feoffor was yet alive, this was a sufficient feoffment. But a livery of seisin either on the land or within the view was necessary. Until such livery had taken place there was no gift; there was nothing but an imperfect attempt to give. We may for purposes of analysis distinguish, as Brac-ton does, the donatio from the traditio the feoffment from the livery, the declaration of the donor's will from the induction of the donee into seisin; but in law the former is simply nothing until it has been followed by the latter. The donatio by itself will not entitle the donee to take seisin; if he does so, he will be guilty of disseising the donor. Nor does the donatio by itself create even a contractual right and bind the donor to deliver seisin. The charter of feoffment, which professedly witnesses a completed gift, will not be read as an agreement to give. Until there has been livery, the feoffee, if such we may call him, had not even ius ad rem. Furthermore, the courts of Bracton's day are insisting with rigorous severity that the livery of seisin shall be no sham. Really and truly the feoffor must quit possession; really and truly the feoffee must acquire possession. No charter, no receipt of homage, no transference of symbolic rods or knives, no renunciation in the local courts, no ceremony before the high altar, can possibly dispense with this, for it is the essence of the whole matter - there must be in very truth a change of possession, and rash is the feoffee who allows his feoffor's chattels to remain upon the land or who allows the feoffor to come back into the house, even as a guest, while the feoffment is yet new. "We are told that at a yet remote time this elaborate 'mode of assurance' began to dissolve into its component parts, some of which could be transacted away from the land. It is not always very convenient for the parties to visit the land. In particular is this the case when one of them is a dead saint. One may indeed, if need be, carry the reliquary that contains him to the field that he is to acquire; but some risk will thus be run; and if the saint cannot come to the field, the field must come to the saint. In miniature it can do so, turf and twig can be brought from it and placed with the knife upon the shrine; the twig can be planted in the convent garden. And then it strikes us that one turf is very much like another, and since the bishop, who has just preached a soul-stirring sermon, would like to secure the bounties of the faithful while compunction is still at work, a sod from the church-yard will do, or a knife without any sod, or a glove, or indeed any small thing that lies handy, for the symbolical significance of sods and knives and gloves is becoming obscure, and the thing thus deposited is now being thought of as a gage or wed (vadium) by which the donor can be constrained to deliver possession of the land. When, under Roman influence, the written document comes into use, this also can be treated as a symbol; it is delivered in the name of the land; the effectual act is not the signing and sealing, but the delivery of the deed, and the parchment can be regarded as being as good a representative of land as a knife or a glove would be. Just as of old the sod was taken up from the ground in order that it might be delivered, so now the charter is laid on the ground and thence it is solemnly lifted up or 'levied' (levatio cartae). Englishmen hereafter will know how to 'levy a fine.' And lastly, there are, as we shall see hereafter, advantages to be gained by a conveyance made before a court of law after some simulated litigation; and one part of the original ceremony can be performed there; the donor or vendor can, in court, go through the solemnity of surrendering or renouncing the land; the rod or festuca can be passed from hand to hand in witness of this surrender." 2