TTEENTH CENTURIES 61 



But at least they were alljnore merciful and less active than 

 many of the newcomers who obtained their lands. Again, 

 some of the tenants would be cottagers holding only very 

 small plots, and depending chiefly on their labour, 1 while on 

 the waste there might be a few squatters who had no legal 

 right to their hovels. 2 There appear also to have been in 

 some cases copyholders on the waste, but these being new 

 had not the real protection of copyholders and could be 

 legally ousted. 3 Again in cases where the lord's demesne 

 lay in strips in the common fields, the tenants would not be 

 copyholders in a legal sense, but really tenants at will 

 (because on the demesne). These, too, could be legally 

 evicted, though such eviction would no doubt be resented. 4 



These evictions on the demesne, however, except in the 

 case of the cottagers, who can scarcely be called landowners 

 at all, though causing much distress and taking away 

 employment from many, would not affect the ownership of 

 land. It is therefore with the tenants on the commonable 

 fields that we^ must deal. 



Now it has been already shown that by the close of the 

 fifteenth century nearly all the villeins had either become 

 copyholders of inheritance or had exchanged their copies 

 for copyholds for lives or for leases for lives. In those 

 cases where the exchange had taken place the copyholder 

 or leaseholder for lives could no longer be called landowners 

 in the legal sense, and they would be legally liable to evic- 

 tion. Yet such eviction would often be a breach of. custom 

 or be considered very unjust, since many of them would 



1 Domesday of Enclosures, voL i. 51. 



a In Gamlingay, Cambridge, the manorial court decided that no 

 cottager should keep a horse or cow on the common except he be an 

 artificer or go from market to market. Merton Coll. Bursars' Book, 

 512-66. 



Savine, Quarterly Journal of Economics, xix. 57. 



* Corbett, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xi. 75. 



