Alienation Office

The Alienation Office (1576 - 1835) was a British Government body charged with regulating the 'alienation' or transfer of certain feudal lands in England by use of a licence to alienate granted by the king, during the feudal era, and by the government thereafter.

The first regulatory structure for controlling the alienation of feudal lands was created during the reign of Henry III (1216-1272), who issued an ordnance prohibiting his tenants-in-chief from alienating their lands held from him without his specific licence.

During the feudal era the king was the only true "owner" of land under his allodial title, and the rest of the population merely "held" estates in land from him under various forms of feudal tenure, directly in the case of his tenants-in-chief, and indirectly in the case of sub-tenants of the latter. The king's tenants-in-chief formed the backbone of the royal army. King William the Conqueror had granted all the land he conquered in England to his principal military commanders, and others to the church and to other of his supporters and servants. These were the first tenants-in-chief of the Anglo-Norman feudal system. The principal was that an estate (or fee) would supply the needs of one knight so that he would be able to appear fully armed, mounted and attended by esquires and retinue, for royal military service for a certain number of days per year. The king wanted to ensure that any new occupant of the fee would be an effective soldier, thus a licence to alienate was effectively a royal veto on a new tenant-in-chief.

Originally the penalty for not obtaining a royal licence was forfeiture of the lands concerned. The next major change occurred in 1327, when the penalty for non-compliance was changed from forfeiture to a fine, payable into the Hanaper of the Chancery. As with many English legal and regulatory systems a gradual evolution occurred to deliver a settled system. The penalty for alienating land without a royal licence became one year's revenue from that land, and the payment required to obtain a licence to alienate was one third of the value of the land to be alienated.

...
Wikipedia