STOCK AND LAND LEASES. 739 



tmue stock and land leasing, even under the onerous terms of 

 doing all their tenant's repairs, and insuring him against extra- 

 ordinary losses of live stock. That this was done is also shown 

 by sufficient evidence. It is not equally, but it is sufficiently clear 

 that, up to the time that the monasteries were dissolved, the 

 custom of letting on stock and lease still existed, that it was 

 profitable to the corporation, and was not disadvantageous to 

 the poorer tenant. 



That the tenants who could occupy land with their own stock 

 did so, and gradually declined the stock and land lease, was 

 similarly inevitable. The result is partly to be seen in the 

 growing infrequency of such a lease, partly in the progressively 

 low value assigned to the stock which is to be treated as inde- 

 structible, partly in the landlord's covenants that he would not 

 only do the repairs, but even insure the stock. It is impos- 

 sible to doubt that, except in such extreme cases as Fitzherbert 

 hints at (p. 65), the tenant was secure against the landlord's 

 rapacity, and we may imagine that he was perhaps even able to 

 take advantage of his landlord's necessities. The tenant knew 

 moreover that the common interest of landlord and tenant 

 would be used against the crown, against grants in parliament, 

 against the officials of the exchequer. The early conviction that 

 there was a common interest between landlord and tenant has 

 endured to our own time, long after it has ceased to be true. 



It appears again, from the record of the rentals at Corpus 

 Christi College, Oxford (p. 136), that it was difficult to raise 

 rents directly, and that there could have been at this time, and 

 for a long time afterwards, little competition between occu- 

 pants for the use of land ; that in fact competition rents had not 

 come into existence. The fact is further illustrated by the expe- 

 dient adopted in the interests of the Cambridge Colleges, of 

 taking corn in place of money rents from their tenants, and even 

 in some cases, cattle and sheep, long before the statute of Eliza- 

 beth was passed. The same difficulty in raising rents, notwith- 

 standing the rise in prices, led to the custom of exacting fines l 



1 See for fines paid to All Souls in 1559, Vol. Ill, p. 685. 



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