SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



mainly of important landholders, the one class to whom serfdom was still of 

 some importance, but their action was in direct contradiction to the general 

 tendency of the time. The action of the law courts, always jealous of 

 private jurisdiction, especially made for freedom, and so without any great 

 Act of Parliament the customary tenants gradually obtained protection for 

 their tenure in the national courts of justice. A new formula was introduced 

 when a tenement was granted to a fresh tenant ; he held by * copy of court 

 roll ' or simply ' by copy,' as well as by the custom of the manor. At 

 Fawley IM the phrase first appears, in a roll of the year 1 409, but it is rare in 

 the beginning of the fifteenth century ; at Langley Marish in 1483 it had 

 become the ordinary designation for customary tenements, a presentment ls * 

 running as follows : * Et quod Johannes Waltys qui de domino tenuit diversas 

 terras tarn libere tam per rotulum curie . . . .' The copyholders gained 

 protection for their land by a writ in the royal courts, but the old dues were 

 still exacted. The sokemen of the ancient demesne were included among the 

 copyholders, though at Aylesbury m the little writ of right was mentioned as 

 part of the custom of the manor in Henry VII's reign. They clung to the 

 certainty of their fines, however, a privilege which was not attained by 

 ordinary copyholders unless they made special terms with the lords. The 

 security of copyhold tenure did not extend to the grants made of demesne 

 land at the will of the lord, but only to the old customary tenements, for in 

 various instances in the ministers' accounts ls * of the sixteenth century the 

 distinction is drawn carefully between tenants by copy and tenants at will. 



If throughout the fourteenth century the tendency was towards greater 

 freedom, and in consequence greater prosperity amongst the manorial tenants, 

 there was a counter-movement which tended to their disadvantage. All the 

 tenants had rights of common for their cattle in the commons and wastes of 

 the manor, rights attached to the tenements that they held. The free 

 tenants had a proprietary right in their common, just as much as in the 

 other parts of their tenements ; but the customary tenants, whatever may have 

 been the origin of their common rights, were in legal theory only allowed to 

 enjoy them as an act of grace on the part of their lords. The importance of 

 such pasture rights was unequalled in an agricultural community, and hence 

 any inclosing of commons or waste lands caused great hardship to the 

 tenants. The fresh incentive to inclosure was the increased profit to be 

 made from sheep-farming, which was widely taken up by both ecclesiastical 

 and lay lords in the fourteenth century, though the movement had begun a 

 century earlier. Large tracts of country were amassed into one hand and 

 turned into separate pasture land, so that the difficulties in the way of arable 

 farming, due to the insufficient supply of labour, were overcome. 



As early as I254 137 there were complaints of the inclosing of parks in 

 various manors in the three hundreds of Newport. At Brill 1M the tenants 

 had been evicted by the firmer of the manor from their right of common in 

 a wood, for which they had already been accustomed to pay 50*. a year, and 

 had never made any default in their payment. The complaints grew so loud 

 in the reign of Edward I that the matter was dealt with in detail in the Statute 



B. M. Add. R. 17150. 



'" Arch. \. 98. 



'" HunJ. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 38. 



114 P.R.O. Ct. R. bdle. i, No. 6. 



" P.R.O. Min. Accu. 37-38 Hen. VIII, bdle. 56, L.R. 



"Ibid. 21. 



59 



