[85] It is stated by good authorities that between 12 Ed. IV., when the collusive action known as a common recovery used to evade the Statute _de donis conditionalibus_ was confirmed by a judicial decision (Taltarum's case), and the introduction into settlements of "Trustees to preserve contingent remainders" by Sir Orlando Bridgeman and Sir Geoffrey Palmer under the Commonwealth, the tieing up of lands in one family was impossible (_e.g._ Johnson, _The Disappearance of the Small Landowner_, pp. 11-?13). But in 1538 Starkey's Dialogue speaks strongly of the practice of entailing lands. "This faute sprange of a certayn arrogancy, whereby, wyth the entaylyng of landys, every Jake would be a gentylman, and every gentylman a knight or a lord" (E. E. T. S., _England in the Reign of Henry VIII._, Part II. pp. 112?-113, and pp. 195?-196.)
[86] Reyce, _Breviary of Suffolk_, p. 58, quoted _Victoria County History, Suffolk_.
Important, however, as the freeholders were from a social and political standpoint, they were in most parts of England far inferior in point of numbers to those described as "customary tenants." It is with the latter class that we are mainly concerned, and leaving the leaseholders on one side for examination later,[87] we may summarise shortly certain features in their position. The number of customary tenants varied from one manor to another, according to the extent to which in different districts farmers holding by lease had been substituted for them, and on some by the middle of the sixteenth century there were none at all. But there are many indications that, down to the end of that century at any rate, and probably much longer, they formed over the great part of England the bulk of the landholding population. Of the revenues of 74 manors held by monastic[88] houses in 1535, £116 came from free, and £1310 from customary, tenants. On 81 of the 118 manors analysed above they are the most numerous class. When all the different districts are grouped together, they amount to about 61 per cent. of all landholders, and even this figure does not give an adequate idea of their numerical importance. As we have seen, Norfolk and Suffolk are quite peculiar in the multitude of freeholders they embrace, while the large number of leaseholders on one extensive Lancashire manor unduly weights the figures for that county. On the Midland manors 62 per cent., in Wiltshire, Devonshire, and Somerset 77 per cent., in Northumberland 91 per cent. of all those holding land are customary tenants. No doubt the area of land held under lease was growing in the course of the sixteenth, and still more in the course of the seventeenth, century, and its growth is an extremely important movement, of which something will be said later. But it seems true to say that, down to the end of the sixteenth century, both in numbers and payments, though not in prestige and influence, the customary tenants, as distinct from the freeholders and leaseholders, were by far the most important class in the agricultural life of the country.