HI TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 73 



and 'Cowpen, in Northumberland. In others there was a 

 good deal. Harrison, in his Description of England, says 

 that ' the ground of the Parish is gotten up into a few 

 hands, yea, sometimes in the tenure of one or two ', though 

 it is not quite clear whether he refers to ownership or no. 

 In Hutchinson's Dorset we are told that some small copy- 

 holders surrendered their copies. Their holdings were 

 taken up by those who remained and enclosure followed. 

 Tuckett, in his History of the Past and Present State of the 

 Labouring Poor, says that in the manor of Holt, in Sussex, 

 where in the fifteenth century there were many owners, in 

 1520 there were only 6, in James I's reign only 2, while in 

 Charles IPs reign the manor had become the sole property 

 of one. The manor of Linton-on-Ouse, where in the reign 

 of Elizabeth there were a large number of tenants, had also 

 by the beginning of the eighteenth century become the 

 property of one man, who gave it to University College. 1 



Whatever may have been the itflrppfli'flfp. rps^lfs nf^ 

 enclosure there is no doubt that there was a very general 

 and widespread substitution-of leaseholds for lives or years 

 for copyholds of inheritance, 2 and that as time went on the 

 indirect effects of enclosure at least tended to the destruc- 

 tion of the small proprietor, more especially in thosp mid- 

 land counties such as 



and Oxfordshire which at that time were chiefly corn- 

 grnvvina- distripf,s j but, whi'^h ha.vp sinpp become notpd for 

 their grazing lands. 



1 Cf. Scrope, Castle Combe, 320 ; Seaton Delaval, Northumberland 

 MSS. ; Harrison, ed. New Shakspere Soc., p. 260 ; Hutchinson, 

 Dorset, iv. 89 ; Victoria County Hist. : Warwickshire, 155 ; Hist, of 

 Northumberland, vol. ix. 4 ; Hist, of Northumberland, Cowpen ; 

 University College Bursar's Book. 



2 Thus out of fifty-nine surveys of manors in twenty-one counties 

 from Henry VIII to Edward VI, I find twelve manors in which lease- 

 holds largely predominate. 





