DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 129 



In 1500 Magdalen College allowed for no less than 607 sheep 

 on its stock and land leases 1 . 



Value partly given and partly estimated on the farm of Alton 

 Barnes, leased to Thomas Tutte with the following stock, live 

 and dead, for five years from 1455. 



Wheat 



Barley 



Pulse 



Oats 



Horses 



Oxen 



Bull 



Cows 



Steers 



Yearlings o 



Muttons 



Rams 



Ewes 



It can be very easily understood, if land and stock leases were 

 a custom in the lettings of monastic lands, how the dissolution 

 of the monasteries and the confiscation of their stock, spread 

 ruin far and wide among those who had been tenants under 

 this custom. That it did so prevail is highly probable, for this 

 lease is in existence up to 1530, within ten years of the disso- 

 lution, and it was natural that the monasteries should make 

 use of the same expedients in the management of their pro- 

 perty as were employed by New and Magdalen Colleges. 

 Besides, as we see from the inventories, the dissolved houses 

 had large quantities of live stock. That the memory of this 

 kind of lease should have passed away after that great social 

 revolution is not remarkable, but its sudden cessation must 

 have added to the calamitous poverty which came upon Eng- 

 land during the latter half of the sixteenth century. 



Another account of the Collector of Rents from the estate 

 possessed by New College in Takeley, Essex, and held by this 



1 Adam Smith discerned that the land and stock lease must have existed in England, 

 though he has no evidence of the fact. Book iii. cap. 2. Vol. i. p. 392 of the author's 

 edition. 



VOL. IV. 



K 



