[62] The Lancashire figures are unduly weighted by those of the single large manor of Rochdale, where, in 1626, there were 612 tenants. If this manor be omitted, there remain only 19 leaseholders on the other Lancashire manors. Like Northumberland, Lancashire seems to be (as one would expect) a county of customary tenants.
[63] There is an error of 4 in the Norfolk figures which I have been unable to trace and correct.
[64] In Domesday Book 35 per cent. of all the tenants in Suffolk are liberi homines, 32 per cent. of all those in Norfolk are either liberi homines or sochemanni. See Vinogradoff, The Growth of the Manor, note 24 to chap. iii. Book III. (p. 376); Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 23; Seebohm, The English Village Community, map opposite p. 85. Domesday also gives a large number of liberi homines and sochemanni in Leicestershire. In the table given above the Leicestershire manors come after Suffolk and Norfolk as having the third largest proportion of freeholders, viz., 21.6 per cent. The return of freeholders supplied to the Government in 1561 (Lansdowne MSS. V., 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15) appear to be considerably understated, probably because only the more substantial men were thought worth mentioning. They are as follows: Beds 282, Berks 166, Essex 880, Notts 189, Oxon. 198, Herts 363, York 787, Lincoln 444. The large number in Essex is noteworthy.
[65] Smith, De Republica Anglorum, Lib I., c. 23.
[66] History of King Henry VII. (Lumley), pp. 70–72. He makes his meaning quite clear by saying “tenancies for years, lives, and at will, whereupon much of the yeomanry lived, were turned into demesnes.”
[67] Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., vol. xvii. (Savine, “Bondmen under the Tudors”).
[68] Ibid.
[69] Smith, De Republica Anglorum, loc. cit.
[70] MSS. of Earl of Leicester at Holkham. Billingford and Bintry MSS. No. 9 (Manor of Foxley, 1568).
[71] e.g. ibid., Sparham MSS. No. 5, a freeholder pays “a pounde of cumming seede and a gillyflower” (c. 1590). R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Duchy of Lancaster, Portf. 6, No. 15: “nyne golden threads of vi.d.” (1568). R.O. Land Rev. Misc. Bks., 182, fol. 1: a tenant “holds freely a cottage paying a red rose.”