70 FARMING FOR PROFIT 



probability, almost equally insecure in their holdings. So long as 

 they were in possession, the court roU was evidence of the incidents 

 of their tenure. But the law was still vague as to rights of suc- 

 cession to copyholds. It may be doubted whether copyholds of 

 inheritance were yet known, and it is reasonably certain that the 

 normal copyhold was for a term of years or for hves. At the 

 expiration of the term of years or of the last life, normal copy- 

 holders were at the mercy of the lord. Even if copyholds of inheri- 

 tance were recognised by lawyers in the sixteenth century, they 

 were still insecure. Their titles must often have been incapable 

 of legal proof ; they might be forfeited by some real or technical 

 breach of custom ; their renewal was subject to the pajnnent of 

 fines on admittance, which might, where no manorial custom fixed 

 the sum, be arbitrary in amount. It was not tiU the close of the 

 eighteenth century that the law fixed the hmits of a reasonable 

 fine, and, if the fines were arbitrary, the landlord had a weapon 

 with which even copyholds of inheritance, as understood by modern 

 lawyers, might be determined. It is impossible to doubt that 

 exorbitant rents and excessive fines, of which the peasant leaders, 

 preachers, and pamphleteers so bitterly complain, were sometimes 

 used to dispossess leaseholders and copyholders. The powers were 

 legal ; but their exercise often worked injustice. Yet it should be 

 remembered, on the other side, that the raising of rents or the 

 enhancing of fines, whenever the opportiuiity occurred, were the 

 only means of adjusting the landlord's income to the great rise in 

 the prices of agricultural produce. In the Compendious or Briefe 

 Examination ^ the Knight puts the landlord's case. "In all my 

 life time," he says, "I looke not that the thirde part of my lande shaU 

 come to my dispocition that I may enhaunce the rent of the same, 

 but it shalbe in mens holdinges either by lease or by copie graunted 

 before my time. . . . We cannot rayse all our wares as youe maye 

 yours." Rents, based on the commutation of labour services at a 

 fixed aimual sum in the fourteenth century did not represent the 

 annual value of the land in 1550. Nor were fines for renewal or on 



1 The Compendious or briefe Examination of certayne ordinary complaints 

 of divers of our countrymen in these our dayes was printed in 1581, and the 

 authorship is attributed to " W. S. Gentleman." But Miss Lamond dis- 

 covered, edited, and published (1893) an edition from a MS. probably written 

 in 1549. She gives reasons for assigning its authorship to John Hales. 

 " W. S." may have been William Stafford (1554-1612) ; but that he was not 

 the writer appears to have been conclusively proved. 



