Chapter 28

AUTHORITIES.--(1) _History and Religion_: Johann Michael Wansleben (Vansleb), a Dominican and learned orientalist (1635-1679), _Hist. de l'église d'Alexandrie_ (Paris, 1677), written at Cairo in 1672 and 1673 mainly from original native sources, and _Nouvelle Relation ... d'un voyage fait en Égypte, &c._ (Paris, 1677 and 1698, Eng. trans., London, 1678); Eusèbe Renaudot the younger (1646-1720), _Historia Patriarcharum Alexandrinorum_ (Paris, 1713); Ab[=u] Dakn (Josephus Abudacnus), _Historia Jacobitarum_ (Oxford, 1675, Eng. trans. by Sir E. Sadleir, London, 1693); S. C. Malan, _Original Documents of the Coptic Church_ (London, 1874); Denzinger, _Ritus Orientalium_ (Würzburg, 1863); Hon. Robert Curzon, _Visits to Monasteries in the Levant_ (London, 1849); J. M. Neale, _Hist. of the Patriarchate of Alexandria_ (2 vols., ib., 1847), in the _Hist. of the Holy Eastern Church_, coloured by the writer's Anglo-Catholic point of view; A. J. Butler, _Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt_ (Oxford, 1884); B. T. A. Evetts and Butler, _Churches and Monasteries of Egypt_, by Ab[=u] S[=a]leh (Oxford, 1895); E. Amélineau, _Monuments pour servir à l'histoire de l'Égypte chrétienne aux IV^e et V^e siècles_, Coptic and Arabic documents published and translated for the first time, in _Mém. de la mission archéolog. franç. au Caire_, t. iv. (Paris, 1888), and _Monuments ... au IV^e siècle_ in the _Annales du musée Guimet_, t. xvii. (Paris, 1889); P. Rohrbach, _Die alexandrinischen Patriarchen_ (Berlin, 1891); Jullien, _L'Égypte: souvenirs bibliques et chrétiens_ (Lille, 1891); Macaire, _Histoire de l'église d'Alexandrie_ (Cairo, 1894); Porphyrius, _The Christian East: Alexandrian Patriarchate_ (St Petersburg, 1898; in Russian); Strzygowski, _Orient oder Rom?_ (Leipzig, 1901); De Bock, _Matériaux pour servir à l'archéologie de l'Égypte chrétienne_ (St Petersburg, 1901); Kitab al _Hul[=a]j[=i] al Mukaddas_ (Cairo, 1902); A. Gayet, "Les Monuments coptes du musée de Boulaq," in the _Mém. miss. archéolog. franç. au Caire_, t. iii. (Paris, 1889); id., L'Art copte (Paris, 1902); Horner, _The Statutes of the Apostles_ (London, 1904); _Egypt Exploration Fund Reports_, section "Christian Egypt"; W. E. Crum, article "Koptische Kirche" in _Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche_, 3. Aufl.; J. M. Fuller's article "Coptic Church" in Smith's _Dictionary of Biography_; A. J. Butler, _The Arab Conquest of Egypt_ (Oxford, 1902); J. Leipoldt, _Schenute von Atripe und die Entstehung des national-ägyptischen Christentums_ (Leipzig, 1903), _Die Entstehung der koptischen Kirche_ (a valuable essay printed as the introduction to R. Haupt's _Katalog_ 5, Halle, 1905); B. T. A. Evetts, "The Patriarchal History of Severus" in Graffin's _Patrologia orientalis_ (Paris); J. Milne, _A History of Egypt under Roman Rule_ (1898).

_Literature._--See Crum's article above referred to, his _Catalogue of Coptic MSS. in the British Museum_, and his annual reviews in the _Archaeological Report_ of the Egypt Exploration Fund; J. Leipoldt in _Geschichte der christlichen Literaturen des Orients_ (Leipzig, 1907); H. Junker, _Koptische Poesie des zehnten Jahrhunderts_, 1. Teil (Berlin, 1908); Archdeacon Dowling, _The Egyptian Church_ (London, 1909).

_Modern People._--E. W. Lane's description of the Copts in his _Modern Egyptians_ is interesting, but founded on imperfect information, and, moreover, coloured by prejudices in favour of the Moslems whom he studied with so much sympathy. See Klunzinger, _Upper Egypt_, pp. 61 et sqq.; also the last chapter of _The Story of the Church of Egypt_, by Mrs E. L. Butcher (1897), on the social life and customs.

COPYHOLD, in English law, an ancient form of land tenure, legally defined as a "holding at the will of the lord according to the custom of the manor." Though nowadays of diminishing practical importance, its incidents are historically interesting. Its origin is to be found in the occupation by villani, or non-freemen, of portions of land belonging to the manor of a feudal lord. In the time of the Domesday survey the manor was in part granted to free tenants, in part reserved by the lord himself for his own uses. The estate of the free tenants is the freehold estate of English law; as tenants of the same manor they assembled together in manorial court or court baron, of which they were the judges. The portion of the manor reserved for the lord (the _demesne_, or domain) was cultivated by labourers who were bound to the land (_adscripti glebae_). They could not leave the manor, and their service was obligatory. These villani, however, were allowed by the lord to cultivate portions of land for their own use. It was a mere occupation at the pleasure of the lord, but in course of time it grew into an occupation by right, recognized first of all by custom and afterwards by law. This kind of tenure is called by the lawyers _villenagium_, and it probably marks a great advance in the general recognition of the right when the name is applied to lands held on the same conditions not by villeins but by free men. The tenants in villenage were not, like the freeholders, members of the court baron, but they appear to have attended in a humbler capacity, and to have solicited the succession to the land occupied by a deceased father, or the admission of a new tenant who had purchased the goodwill, as it might be called, of the holding, paying for such favours certain customary fines or dues. In relation to the tenants in villenage, the court baron was called the customary court. The records of the court constituted the title of the villein tenant, held by copy of the court roll (whence the term "copyhold"); and the customs of the manor therein recorded formed the real property law applicable to his case.

Copyhold had long been established in practice before it was formally recognized by the law. At first it was in fact, as it is now in the fictitious theory of the law, a tenancy at will, for which none of the legal remedies of a freeholder were available. In the reign of Edward IV., however, it was held that a tenant in villenage had an action of trespass against the lord. In this way a species of tenant-right, depending on and strongly supported by popular opinion, was changed into a legal right. But it retained many incidents characteristic of its historical origin. The life of copyhold assurance, it is said, is custom. Copyhold is necessarily parcel of a manor, and the freehold is said to be in the lord of the manor. The court roll of the manor is the evidence of title and the record of the special laws as to fines, quit rents, heriots, &c., prevailing in the manor. When copyhold land is conveyed from one person to another, it is surrendered by the owner to the lord, who by his payment of the customary fine makes a new grant of it to the purchaser. The lord must admit the vendor's nominee, but the form of the conveyance is still that of surrender and re-grant. The lord, as legal owner of the fee-simple of the lands, has a right to all the mines and minerals and to all the growing timber, although the tenant may have planted it himself. Hence it appears that the existence of copyhold tenures may sometimes be traced by the total absence of timber from such lands, while on freehold lands it grows in abundance. Hence also the popular saying that the "oak grows not except on free land." The copyholder must not commit waste either by cutting down timber, &c., or by neglecting to repair buildings. In such respects the law treats him as a mere lessee,--the real owner being supposed to be the lord. On the other hand, the lord may not enter the land to cut his own timber or open his mines. The limitations of estates usual in respect of other lands, as found in copyhold, become subject of course to the operations of its peculiar conditions as to the relation of lord and tenant. An estate for life, or _pour autre vie_ (i.e. for another's life), an estate entail, or in fee-simple, may be carved out of copyhold.

A species of tenure resembling copyhold is what is known as _customary freehold_. The land is held by copy of court-roll, but not by will of the lord. The question has been raised whether the freehold of such lands is in the lord of the manor or in the tenant, and the courts of law have decided in favour of the former. In some instances copyhold for lives alone is recognized, and in such cases the lord of the manor may ultimately, when all the lives have dropped, get back the land into his own hands.

The feudal obligations attaching to copyhold tenure have been found to cause much inconvenience to the tenants, while they are of no great value to the lord. One of the most vexatious of these is the _heriot_, under which name the lord is entitled to seize the tenant's best beast or other chattel in the event of the tenant's death. The custom dates from the time when all the copyholder's property, including the copyholder himself, belonged to the lord, and is supposed to have been fixed by way of analogy to the custom which gave a military tenant's habiliments to his lord in order to equip his successor. Instances have occurred of articles of great value being seized as heriots for the copyhold tenements of their owners. A race horse worth £2000 or £3000 was thus seized. The fine payable on the admission of a new tenant, whether by alienation or succession, is to a certain extent arbitrary, but the courts long ago laid down the rule that it must be reasonable, and anything beyond two years' improved value of the lands they disallowed.

The inconvenience caused by these feudal incidents of the tenure led to a series of statutes, having for their object the conversion of copyhold into freehold. The first Copyhold Act, that of 1841, was consolidated by the Copyhold Act 1894. Owing to the incidents attaching to land "holden by copy of court roll according to the custom of the manor" in the shape of fines and heriots, the inability to grant a lease for a term exceeding a year, and to the peculiar rules as to descent, waste, dower, curtesy, alienation, and other matters, varying often from manor to manor and widely differing from the uniform law applicable to land in general, enfranchisement, or the conversion of land held by copyhold tenure into freehold, is often desired. This could and may still be effected at common law, but only by agreement on the part of both the lord and the tenant. Moreover, it was subject to other disadvantages. The cost fell on the tenant, and the land when enfranchised was subject to the encumbrances attaching to the manor, and so an investigation into the lord's title was necessary. In 1841 an act was passed to provide a statutory method of enfranchisement, removing some of the barriers existing at common law; but the machinery created was only available where both lord and tenant were in agreement. The Copyhold Act 1852 went further, and for the first time introduced the principle of compulsory enfranchisement on the part of either party. By the Copyhold Act 1894, which now governs statutory enfranchisement, the former Copyhold Acts 1841-1887, were repealed, and the law was consolidated and improved. Enfranchisement is now effected under this act, though in certain cases it is also to be obtained under special acts, such as the Land Clauses Consolidation Act 1848; and the old common law method with all its disadvantages is still open. The Copyhold Act 1894 deals both with compulsory and with voluntary enfranchisement. In either case the sanction of the Board of Agriculture must be obtained; and powers are bestowed on it to decide questions arising on enfranchisement, with an appeal to the High Court. The actual enfranchisement, where it is compelled by one of the parties, is effected by an award made by the board; in the case of a voluntary enfranchisement it is completed by deed. Under the act it is open to both lord and tenant to compel enfranchisement, though the expenses are to be borne by the party requiring it. The compensation to the lord, in the absence of an agreement, is ascertained under the direction of the board on a valuation made by a valuer or valuers appointed by the lord and tenant; and may be paid either in a gross sum or by way of an annual rent charge issuing out of the land enfranchised, and equivalent to interest at the rate of 4% on the amount fixed upon as compensation. This rent charge is redeemable on six months' notice at twenty-five times its annual amount. The tenant, even if he is the compelling party, may elect either method; but the lord has not the same option, and where the enfranchisement is at his instance, unless there is either an agreement to the contrary or a notice on the part of the tenant to exercise his option, the compensation is a rent charge. Power is conferred on the lord to purchase the tenant's interest where a change in the condition of the land by enfranchisement would prejudice his mansion house, park or gardens; while on the other hand, in the interest of the public or the other tenants, the board is authorized to continue conditions of user for their benefit.

So far the provisions relating to compulsory enfranchisement have been dealt with; but even in the case of a voluntary agreement the lord and tenant are only entitled to accept enfranchisement with the consent of the Board of Agriculture. The consideration in addition to a gross sum or a rent charge may consist of a conveyance of land, or of a right to mines or minerals, or of a right to waste in lands belonging to the manor, or partly in one way and partly in another. The effect of enfranchisement, whether it be voluntary or compulsory, is that the land becomes of freehold tenure subject to the same laws relating to descent, dower and curtesy as are applicable to freeholds, and so freed from Borough English, Gavelkind (save in Kent), and other customary modes of descent, and from any custom relating to dower or free-bench or tenancy by curtesy. Nevertheless, the lord is entitled to escheat in the event of failure of heirs, just as if the land had not been enfranchised. The land is held under the same title as that under which it was held at the date at which the enfranchisement takes effect; but it is not subject to any estate right, charge, or interest affecting the manor. Every mortgage of copyhold estate in the land enfranchised becomes a mortgage of the freehold, though subject to the priority of the rent charge paid in compensation under the act. All rights and interests of any person in the land and all leases remain binding in the same manner. On the other hand the tenant's rights of common still continue attached to the freehold; and, without express consent in writing of the lord or tenant respectively, the right of either in mines or minerals shall not be affected by the change. No creation of new copyholds by granting land out of the waste is permissible, save with the consent of the Board of Agriculture; and the act enacts that a valid admittance of a new copyholder may be made without holding a court.

Under the earlier acts, machinery to free the land from the burden of the old rents, fines and heriots was set up, commuting them into a rent charge or a fine. Commutation, however, is never compulsory, and differs from enfranchisement in that, whereas by enfranchisement the land in question is converted into freehold, by commutation it still continued parcel of the manor, though subject to a rent charge or a fine, as might have been agreed. The ordinary laws of descent, dower, and curtesy were, however, substituted for the customs in relation to these matters incidental to the land in question before commutation, and the timber became the tenant's.

AUTHORITIES.--C. I. Elton, _Law of Copyholds_ (1898); C. Watkins, _On Copyholds_ (1825); _Scriven on Copyholds_, ed. A. Brown (1896); A. Brown, _Copyhold Enfranchisement Acts_ (1895).

COPYING MACHINES. Appliances of various kinds have been devised for producing copies of writings made by the pen or pencil. A simple method commonly adopted when only a single copy is required is to write the original with specially prepared copying ink (formed by adding some thickening substance like sugar or gum to ordinary ink), to place upon it a damped sheet of thin absorbent paper, and to press the two together in some way, as in a copying press. The resulting impression, being reversed, must be read from the back of the absorbent paper, which is thin enough to be transparent. Another process, by which a considerable number of copies can be made simultaneously, consists in interleaving a number of sheets of thin white paper with sheets of paper prepared with lampblack ("carbon paper") and writing on the top sheet with a "style" or other sharp-pointed instrument. The hectograph may be taken as typical of manifolding processes analogous to lithography. In it the writing is in first instance done with aniline ink, and then a transfer is made to a plate of a gelatinous composition, from which a series of duplicates can be taken off. Another class of methods involves the preparation of what are essentially stencils. In the cyclostyle, paper of a special kind is stretched over a smooth metal plate, and the writing instrument consists of a holder having at the end a small wheel provided with a serrated edge on its periphery, which perforates the paper with lines of minute cuts and thus forms a stencil. When ink is passed over this stencil with a roller it goes through the perforations and leaves an impression on a piece of paper placed underneath. In the trypograph a similar result is attained by using a simple style for writing, but stretching the paper over a metal plate having its surface covered with fine sharp corrugations which pierce the paper as the style is moved over them. In the Edison electric pen the stencil is formed by the aid of a style containing a fine needle, which is rapidly moved up and down by a small electric motor mounted at the top of the pen, and thus a series of minute holes is punctured in the paper by the act of writing. For copying plans and drawings, engineers, architects, &c., use a "blue print" process which depends on the action of light on certain salts of iron (see SUN-COPYING and PHOTOGRAPHY).

COPYRIGHT, in law, the right, belonging exclusively to the author or his assignees, of multiplying for sale copies of an original work or composition, in literature or art. As a recognized form of property it is, compared with others, of recent origin, being in fact, in the use of literary works, mainly the result of the facility for multiplying copies created by the discovery of printing. It is with copyright in literary compositions that we are here primarily concerned, as it was established first, the analogous right as regards works of plastic art, &c., following in its train.

1. Whether copyright was recognized at all by the common law of England was long a much debated legal question. Blackstone thinks that "this species of property, being grounded on labour and invention, is more properly reducible to the head of occupancy than any other, since the right of occupancy itself is supposed by Mr Locke and many others to be founded on the personal labour of the occupant." But he speaks doubtfully of its existence--merely mentioning the opposing views, "that on the one hand it hath been thought no other man can have a right to exhibit the author's work without his consent, and that it is urged on the other hand that the right is of too subtle and unsubstantial a nature to become the subject of property at the common law, and only capable of being guarded by positive statutes and special provisions of the magistrate." He notices that the Roman law adjudged that if one man wrote anything on the paper or parchment of another, the writing should belong to the owner of the blank materials, but as to any other property in the works of the understanding the law is silent, and he adds that "neither with us in England hath there been (till very lately) any final determination upon the rights of authors at the common law." The common law undoubtedly gives a right to restrain the publication of _unpublished_ compositions; but when a work is once published, its protection depends on the statutes regulating copyright. The leading case on the subject of unpublished works is _Prince Albert_ v. _Strange_ (1849), 2 De G. & Sm. 652. Copies of etchings by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, which had been lithographed for private circulation, fell into the hands of the defendant, a London publisher, who proposed to exhibit them, and issued a catalogue entitled _A Descriptive Catalogue of the Royal Victoria and Albert Gallery of Etchings_. The court of chancery restrained the publication of the catalogue, holding that property in mechanical works, or works of art, does certainly subsist, and is invaded, before publication, not only by copying but by description or catalogue. This protection includes news (_Exchange Telegraph Co._ v. _Central News_, 1897).

Nature of right.

As a matter of principle, the nature of copyright itself, and the reasons why it should be recognized in law, have, as already stated, been the subject of bitter dispute. It was attacked as constituting a monopoly, and it has been argued that copyright should be looked upon as a doubtful exception to the general law regulating trade, and should be strictly limited in point of duration. On the other hand, it is claimed that copyright, being in the nature of personal property, should be perpetual. A man's own work, in this view, is as much _his_ as his house or his money, and should be protected by the state. Historically, and in legal definition, there would appear to be no doubt that copyright, as regulated by statute, is strictly a monopoly. The parliamentary protection of works of art for the period of fourteen years by an act of 1709 and later statutes appears, as Blackstone points out, to have been suggested by the exception in the Statute of Monopolies 1623. The object of that statute was to suppress the royal grants of exclusive right to trade in certain articles, and to reassert in relation to all such monopolies the common law of the land. Certain exceptions were made on grounds of public policy, and among others it was allowed that a royal patent of privilege might be granted for fourteen years "to any inventor of a new manufacture for the sole working or making of the same." Copyright, like patent right, would be covered by the legal definition of a monopoly. It is a mere right to prevent other people from manufacturing certain articles. But objections to monopolies in general do not apply to this particular class of cases, in which the author of a new work in literature or art has the right of preventing others from manufacturing copies thereof and selling them to the public. The rights of persons licensed to sell spirits, to hold theatrical exhibitions, &c., are also of the nature of monopolies, and may be defended on special grounds of public policy. The monopoly of authors and inventors rests on the general sentiment underlying all civilized law, that a man should be protected in the enjoyment of the fruits of his own labour.

LITERARY COPYRIGHT

Historical account.