[499] Fitzherbert, _Book of Surveying_, p. 32.
[501] _Topographer and Genealogist_, vol. i., survey of Mudford and Hinton.
But were the tenants at will and the leaseholders the only classes to be evicted? No allusion has yet been made to the most difficult problem which confronts the student of the sixteenth century agrarian changes--the degree of protection enjoyed by the copyholders. If this problem is the most difficult it is also one of the most important. As far as can be calculated, the copyholders far exceeded in number upon most manors all other classes of tenants together. Copyhold tenure was the rule, and tenure at will and leasehold were generally the exception, though the latter was an important exception. If all copyholders had complete security, and were readily protected in their holdings by the courts, there would be little sense in talking of an agrarian revolution; for the changes, though they might still have caused much individual suffering, could hardly have constituted anything like the serious national danger which they were thought to be by many contemporaries. Again, the copyholders were in a special sense the kernel of a manor, the representatives of an ancient social system, around which the newer relationships of leasehold were, so to speak, comparatively modern accretions. It was with them and their business that the manorial courts were concerned; a copyhold tenement could not exist apart from a manor because surrender and admission in the manorial court was essential to its recognition as copyhold; and the very name of "customary tenants," by which copyholders were often described, suggests the special antiquity and fixity of their position. Even in the sixteenth century there were still manors where there were no tenants at all except copyholders, and the mere shedding of the outer layers of small leaseholders, who had sprung up around them, would have left the organisation of such manors quite intact. It would have cut back recent developments; it would not have shaken rural society very seriously. One's view of the importance of the agrarian changes of the sixteenth century will depend, therefore, to a great extent, upon the opinion which is formed of the legal position of the copyholders.