TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 63 



period under review the legal theory was becoming 



>lete,_and custom was on its way to become law till. _by 



time of Coke, the copyholder had obtained full legal 



Mion of his custom at the common law. 1 But the case 



against Mr- Ashley is stronger than this; Whatever we may 



think as to the value of the opinions of judges Bryan and 



Danby, 2 in the later fifteenth century, the Year Books 



from Henry VII to Elizabeth give unmistakable evidence that 



copyhold leases were then determinable at the common law. 3 



Nor is this all, Mr. Savine has brought evidence to 



show that already in^ the fifteenth century the Court of 



Chancery had begun to protect the copyholder. He has 



discovered one case as early as the fourteenth century, and 



as many as twenty-four in the fifteenth. Mr. Leadam 



also adduces many cases in the Court of Star Chamber and 



the Court of Requests, in which the copyholders were either 



plaintiffs or defendants. It is true that they were not 



always successful, yet the elaborate pleadings prove, says 



Mr. Leadam, ' that copyholders had a legal protection, else 



these pleadings would be i 



1 Coke, The Complete Copyholder, ed. 1763, ix. 



2 Savine, Quarterly Journal of Economics, xix. 64 ; Maitland, Law 

 Quarterly, vii. 174. 



3 Savine, English Hist. Review, xviii. 303 ; Quarterly Journal of 

 Economics, xix. 66 ; Star Chamber Proceedings, vol. vi, no. 161, 

 communicated to me by Mr. Leadam. Here Palmer, who was lord of 

 the manor and defendant, pleads that the case against his copyholders 



jht to be tried in the Common Law Courts. English Hist. Review, 

 i. 686. Here the copyhold tenants of Sir J. Seynt John complain 

 the Court of Requests that Sir J. is too powerful for them to try for 

 sir remedy by due course of Common Law. 

 ' For the whole question see Ashley, Economic Hist., bk. ii, c. iv. 



4 ; Leadam, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., vol. vi. 164 ; Ashley, 

 iglish Hist. Review, April, 1893 ; Leadam, English Hist. Review, 

 ;t., 1893 ; Leadam. Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., vol. vii. 127 ; 

 vine, English Hist. Review, xviii. 296; Quarterly Journal of 

 jonomics, xix. 33 ; Leadam, Selden Soc., Select cases, Court of 

 squests ; Hist, of Northumberland, viii. 289. 



