There was thus opportunity for a considerable displacement of population without any need of raising the difficult question of the degree of security enjoyed by copyhold tenure. When a manor was occupied only by tenants at will without copies, or when its demesne lands were leased for short terms to a number of lessees, or when its waste had been gradually taken in either by new settlers or by the customary tenants, land could be resumed by the lord without any conflict save, in the first case, with a custom which two centuries before had been powerful but now was weak, and in the second case with a terminable interest. It is not necessary to adduce instances to prove the liability of the tenant at will or lessee to eviction, because the nature of their interest makes it obvious that they could not claim to have complete legal security. Examples of the first kind are, indeed, not very common, owing to the fact that by our period tenure at will of the lord had in most places hardened into copyhold, and their comparative rarity may suggest that tenants at will who had not become copyholders had been displaced on most manors by the beginning of the century. The case of two Wiltshire manors may serve to illustrate their position. At Knyghton[491] the whole manor was in 1554 leased to a farmer, and with the manor the rents and service of six customary tenants holding at will. At Domerham,[492] in 1568, almost the whole of the land was in the hands of three large farmers, but "it has been granted to Richard Compton, Thomas Pryce, John Pryce, and Robert Kynge, to sow of the above said land every year 120 acres." In the second case the precariousness of the tenants' position is obvious; they are mere squatters, who are there, as it were, on sufferance. In the first case it has been recognised and mitigated, as far as the farmer is concerned, by a clause in his agreement binding him to leave the tenants in peaceable enjoyment as long as they pay their rents. But they have no security as against the lord, and are liable to immediate eviction if it proves more profitable to add their holdings to the large farm. When tenants commence an action against a lord for wrongful disseisin, it is sufficient for him to answer that they are "but his tenantry at wyll."[493]