SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



years to three years up to seven years. They also had the right to cut 

 down trees.'* 



At Bishop's Hatfield the copyholders might sell any part of their 

 tenements by a surrender ; but if they occupied any customary land without 

 copy and without licence the lord could seize it. They were not allowed 

 to grub up bushes and fell timber at their discretion, although they not 

 infrequently did so. They might let their copyholds on the same condition 

 as the men of Hexton.'* The lord and his copyholders were quarrelling 

 over these points at the same time that the lord was fighting the whole 

 tenantry on the question of commons. 



The prevalence of leases is important. The long lease gave a stable 

 under-tenure, of particular importance at such a crisis as the dissolution of 

 the monasteries. That long leases were common, and perhaps specially on 

 monastic land, there is a good deal of evidence, or when the holding was 

 large and the rent high. In 1 5 1 6 the manor of Bushey, the mill and 

 warren were leased severally for thirty years. '^ The Prior of Royston 

 leased two of his manors for sixty years from 1511.'° As early as 1 5 1 5 the 

 Abbot of St. Albans let his manor of Norton for fifty years " and gave other 

 long leases in 15 16 and 1523.''' The Abbot of Waltham let property to 

 a Londoner for sixty-one years in 1526, and twenty-one, thirty-one and 

 forty-one years were favourite terms. From about 1531 religious houses 

 made rapid grants of their property in leasehold for political reasons. 

 Clearly in Hertfordshire the Dissolution meant rather the change of ground 

 landlord than of occupier. 



Leases also gave the tenants their opportunity, in so far as they made 

 land a commodity easily to be obtained and easily left. The result was a 

 concentration of holdings in the tenant's hand. 



The letting of the demesne shows clearly that some lords were not 

 sheep-farming even in the early 15th century. At Weston the whole 

 demesne, arable, fallow and pasture, was let.'' So was the demesne at Baas 

 in 1390.'" At Ware, as late as 1429, 70 acres of arable were leased to a 

 tenant, with 80 acres of poor meadow and 36 acres of pasture.'^ At 

 Shenley and at Bushey the manors were leased in the same way in 1429.'' 

 The manor of Cockenach (in Barkway) is a contrast, where the Prior of 

 Royston kept the demesnes in the open fields with folding for 200 sheep. ''^ 



Sheep-farming was not as yet a source of agrarian trouble. Inclosures 

 had been begun, especially on the demesne, in the 14th century. These 

 inclosures seem to have been of meadow, and possibly of pasture, but above 

 all of arable, of which the value was quadrupled if it were several." In 

 the southern part, where the attraction of the London corn market might 

 have been strongest, the inclosure of arable seems not to have been excessive 

 by the middle of the 1 6th century. In the manor of Moor, in Rickmans- 



^' Chan. Proc. Eliz. (Ser. 2), bdle. 225, no. 102. ^ Misc. Bks. Ld. Rev. ccxvi, i et seq. 



26 Rentals and Surv. portf. 8, no. 22. 26 Mins. Accts. 28 & 29 Hen. VIII, no. 85. 



3' Ibid. 32 & 33 Hen. VIII, no. 71, m. 37. ^8 ibid. m. 5 ; Pat. 25 Hen. VIII, pt. i, no. 44. 



29 Mins. Accts. bdle. 873, no. 25. 30 Rentals and Surv. R. 300. 



31 Chan. Inq. p.m. 7 Hen. VII, no. 57. The meadow and pasture had been let for ten years in 

 1423 ; Add. MS. 27976, fol. 17 et seq. 



32 Chan. Inq. p.m. 7 Hen. VI, no. 57. 32a Mins. Accts. 28 & 29 Hen. VIII, no. 85. 



33 Misc. Chan. Inq. p.m. file 228, no. 177 (King's Walden). 



213 



