Castle Combe (Wilts, 1454, Scrope, History of Castle Combe); Ibstone (Bucks, 1483, Merton MSS., No. 5902); Cuxham (Oxford, 1483, Merton MSS., No. 5902); Malden (Surrey, 1496, Merton MSS., Survey of Malden); Aspley Guise (Bedford, 1542, from information kindly supplied by Mr. G.H. Fowler, of Aspley Guise); Ewerne (Dorset, 1568, Topographer and Genealogist, vol i.); Edgeware (Middlesex, 1597, All Souls Estate Maps); Kingsbury (Middlesex, 1597, All Souls Estate Maps); Gamlingay Merton (Cambridge, 1601, Merton Estate Maps); Gamlingay Avenells (Cambridge, 1601, Merton Estate Maps).
The chief criticisms which may be made upon this table are:—
(i) Some of the documents from which the figures are taken are separated from each other by a very long interval of time, so that they do not all represent approximately the same stage of agrarian development. This is a disadvantage. It is possible, for example, that, if the manor of Rochdale could be examined in 1526 instead of in 1626, it would be found that the proportion of copyholders to leaseholders was higher than it is at the later date. This defect, however, is perhaps not so great as to outweigh the value of the general picture of the relative proportion of different classes given by the table. A great majority of the documents from which it is compiled belong to the sixteenth century, and are dated as follows: Those of 10 manors are of an uncertain date, those of 3 fall between 1450 and 1485, of 2 in the reign of Henry VII., of 19 in that of Henry VIII., of 5 in that of Edward VI., of 3 in that of Philip and Mary, of 60 in that of Elizabeth, of 13 in that of James I., of 2 in that of Charles I., of 1 in 1649.
(ii) The lists of tenants given by the surveyors may sometimes not be exhaustive. I am not sure, for example, that all the freeholders on the manor of Crondal, or all the leaseholders at Gamlingay Merton and Gamlingay Avenells, are recorded.
(iii) It is sometimes not clear under what category a tenant should be entered. When there is no clue at all I have entered such tenants as “uncertain.” In some cases, however, though there is no entry by the surveyor, there are indications that the tenants are freeholders, customary tenants, or leaseholders, and, when that is so, I have grouped them in the table according to the probabilities of the case. But I do not doubt that I have made some mistakes.
(iv) A special word must be said about Norfolk and Suffolk. In these counties it is quite common to find the same tenant holding both by free and by customary tenure. When this is so, I have entered him both under “freeholders" and under “customary tenants" in the table. This means, of course, that the numbers entered for these two counties in the table exceed the number of individual landholders. As, however, my object was to ascertain the distribution of different classes of tenures, this course, though not satisfactory, seemed the best one to follow. In other counties a similar difficulty hardly ever occurs, a fact which is of some interest as showing the relatively advanced agrarian conditions of Norfolk and Suffolk. In the few cases in which it does occur I have followed the same plan as I have for those two counties.
[Table II.] ([pp. 32 and 33)]
This table is based on documents relating to the undermentioned manors. The sources from which the information is taken are given in the explanation of Table I., and I therefore do not repeat them.
1. Norfolk.