Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 71 



of Northumberland, expresses an opinion that the fate of the 

 Northumbrian customary tenants was much worse than 

 elsewhere where their tenure had developed into copyhold, 

 and attributes the difference to the exceptional favour 

 shown to the lords* interests in the marches. I venture, 

 however, to dispute this statement. The quarrel was going 

 on all over England and on the whole the landlords gained 

 the advantage. The real difference is one of date, for 

 whereas the earlier centuries bad witnessed the strengthen- 

 ing of the customary rights into a copyhold of inheritance, 

 in the seventeenth century the tendency was the other way. 

 Besides, later history shows us that there were quite as many 

 copyholders of inheritance in the northern counties as else- 

 where. 



And now to sum up the results of this discussion. It does 

 not appear that the enclosing movement of the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries was accompanied by very much 

 direct eviction, either of freeholders or of bona fide copy- 

 holders of inheritance. Nevertheless the small owner suffered 

 in many ways. Thus in all cases where the lords succeeded 

 in disproving the hereditary character of the copyhold 

 tenements or in changing- them into copyholds for lives or 

 leases for lives or years, he or his successors could with 



end of the termination of the years or lives, except on the 

 payment of practically prohibitory fines. Many of these 

 copyholders, without having- any legal title to their holdings, 

 which could be supported in a court of law, had yet long 

 held them and possessed a certain prescriptive sort of 

 tenant-right, a right which under the protection of the old 

 customary law of the manor and its court might have 

 acquired substance, and which even the Crown courts 

 attempted (though not very successfully, owing to the 

 greater precision of their ruling) to legalize. 



