Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 67 



literature of this time. We have already quoted Harrison. 

 His view is supported, among many others, by Fitzherbert, 

 who, in the Prologue to his Surveying, adjures ' lordes not 

 to heighten their rents or cause tenants to pay a greater 

 fine than they have been accustomed to in the past '. The 

 rebels in the Pilgrimage of Grace complain of increase of 

 ' gressons ' (fines), while the Prayer for landlords, men- 

 tioned above, runs, * O Lord, we heartily pray that the 

 landlords, remembering themselves to be Thy tenants, 

 may not rack and stretch out the rents of their lands, nor 

 yet take unreasonable fines after the manner of covetous 

 worldlings/ 1 We hear, too, of a class of speculating lease- 

 mongers who, not able to be landlords, yet, after a sort, 

 counterfeit landlords by obtaining leases, and so raise 

 fines and rents, and by such pillage pyke out a poison to 

 maintayn a proud post/' 2 Now the peculiarity of this 

 system of fines for the renewal of copyholds or leaseholds 

 for lives lay in their inequality and capriciousness. No 

 doubt the Law Courts gradually insisted that fines should 

 be reasonable. But not till 1781 was it decided that a 

 reasonable fine should not exceed two years' value. 3 



As to the substitution of leases for copyholds we find 

 Fitzherbert actually advising lords to do this and not for 

 longer than three lives, at the same time urging them to 

 grant them on good terms, ' remembering what profytes 



1 Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xviii. 196, note. 



* Latimer's Sermon ; Early English Text Soc., Crowley, pp. 79, 166 ; 

 Scrope, Castle Combe, p. 320 ; Cheyney, Social Changes, p. 81 ; Savine, 

 Quarterly Journal of Economics, pp. 55, 66 ; Transactions Royal Hist. 

 Soc., vii. 131 ; 1892, 249 ; Ashley, Economic Hist., bk. ii, c. iv, p. 283 ; 

 Selden Soc. 12, Court of Requests, p. 64 ; Hist, of Northumberland, 

 i. 314 ; ii. 382, 384, 427, 432 ; viii. 236, 238, 264 ; Victoria County 

 Hist. : Durham, ii. 228,where note difference between the Priory Lands 

 and those held of the Bishop ; T. Q_uayle, View of Agriculture of the 

 Isle of Man, 1812, p. 17. 



3 Case of Grant c. Aske, 



