s 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 cust